Professional bodies’ foundations remain outside the ETS Register

Foundations established or controlled by professional bodies fall outside the scope of the Third Sector Register.

This is reiterated in Note 13041 of 14 August, in which the Ministry of Labour revisits the issue of organisations excluded from the scope of the Third Sector Code, this time in response to a query raised by the Social Policy Committee of the Conference of Regions.

The Ministry bases its argument on the classification of professional bodies and associations as non-economic public bodies with compulsory membership, as confirmed on several occasions by the established case law of the Constitutional Court, the Court of Cassation and the Council of State, and expressly classified as public administrations as referred to in Article 1(2) of Legislative Decree 165/2001.

It was precisely this classification that the Commission had raised a doubt about, referring to Article 12-ter of Decree-Law 75/2023, which exempts professional bodies in sound economic and financial standing from measures aimed solely at curbing public expenditure: a provision, the note clarifies, which in no way detracts from the public-law nature of the professional bodies and therefore has no bearing whatsoever on the prohibition on registration in the single national register of the third sector, which also extends to the bodies directed, controlled or coordinated by them.

The very fact that registration with the Register is compulsory, in the interests of safeguarding the public interest, structurally distinguishes the professional bodies from voluntary professional associations, which are governed by Law 4/2013 on unorganised professions.