Code of Ethics of the Autonomous Body ANECA

Approved by the Governing Council on November 22, 2023, published in the BOE on December 29, 2023 and in force from December 30, 2023.

The new Code of Ethics of the Autonomous Body ANECA, after its approval by the Governing Council at its meeting on November 22, 2023, has been published in the BOE of December 29, 2023, thereby complying with the mandate established in the additional provision eighth of Royal Decree 678/2023, of July 18, which regulates state accreditation for access to university teaching bodies and the regime of competitions for access to places in said bodies.

The new Code of Ethics will be in force as of December 30, 2023, and will apply to all people who participate in ANECA's activities, both its own staff and the evaluators and experts who collaborate with the Agency.

The Code of Ethics of any institution can be considered the instrument to express the values, principles and basic rules of conduct that inspire its function and structure. By definition, it seems to be linked more to the moral foundations of the organization and the desirable conduct of its members than to the legal norms that apply to it. It should be said that its main objective is to motivate the adhesion of its members so that they internalize and follow by their own conviction certain rules of conduct in the activity they carry out in said institution. Consequently, the Code of Ethics is aimed primarily at those who perform any function in the institution itself and, due to its ethical nature, must be known, accepted and complied with out of conviction. It follows from this that a Code of Ethics should be as specific, brief and clear as possible, avoiding any generality in its statements. Thus, ANECA's new Code of Ethics has been drafted with the intention of satisfying these criteria and, therefore, of collecting only the principles and rules of conduct that are specific for the different operators of the functions that ANECA must perform according to their Statute (its management staff, its official and labor staff, and the evaluators and experts who are part of its commissions and committees).

Unlike the Ethical Codes previously approved in ANECA (2017 and 2021), which provided that non-compliance by an evaluator would give rise to the instruction of a separation file from the corresponding Commission or Committee that "will not have, in no case, disciplinary nature", which may lead to "involving exclusion as an expert or evaluator from any ANECA program and from future appointment proposals", article 9.4 of Royal Decree 678/2023, of July 18, establishes, On the contrary, that the file for the removal of committee members in the case of non-compliance with the Code of Ethics will be disciplinary in nature, and that its processing will be carried out in accordance with the provisions of title IV of Law 39/2015, of 1 of October, of the Common Administrative Procedure of Public Administrations.