In 2005 San Marino halted its agreement with Italy, partly out of fear of losing sovereignty. Today, twenty years on, the country faces the very same issue with the European Union: bringing its financial sector into line with European rules.
This is the comparison drawn by Matteo Rossi (PSD) in his address today, Monday 9 November, before the Foreign Affairs Committee. The councillor backs the Association Agreement, retraces the choices that preceded the years of the black list, and warns that the fifteen years allowed for adjustment must not become an excuse to wait.
“It is right to see this moment as a historic milestone in our institutional presence. We will not see another event of this magnitude within the Foreign Affairs Committee again.
It is right to underline this and to thank everyone who worked towards it: the foreign secretaries, the administration, the political parties, and the people outside who have always publicly supported this path.
We are truly delighted.
In my remarks I would like to make a few historical clarifications and considerations that carry political weight, because in the earlier speeches I heard certain reconstructions of events — quite apart from the visions and commitments we will need to fulfil in future regarding the modernisation of the administration, the private sector and the financial sector.
I would like to take a historical detour, above all to stress that we must not repeat the mistakes made in the past.
This matters, because Secretary Beccari’s account began in 2008. He has told this story many times, both personally and publicly: in the experience of the new government formed in 2008, together with Secretary Antonella Mularoni, they embarked on this path because the situation was genuinely dire.
San Marino was living through the most difficult moment in its history, with the black lists in place.
Earlier, Commissioner Mussoni noted that he had lived through them firsthand during his time in government, and again later, when he was Secretary for Health. He knows what it meant to be a Secretary of State at a time like that.
Our colleague Baciocchi mentioned 2006 as the year the cooperation agreement with Italy was not signed. I would go back one step further, because I believe 2005 was truly the lowest point. If we want to picture San Marino’s climb back on the international and institutional stage as a metaphor, we have 16 November 2005, whose anniversary is coming up shortly.
On that day, the Grand and General Council (Consiglio Grande e Generale), on the eve of the arrival of the Italian Foreign Minister, held a dumbfounding debate and passed a resolution that effectively turned back the clock by who knows how many years, both in terms of timing and in terms of institutional relations with the Italian Republic.
Imagine today a foreign minister of a country like Italy, or a European commissioner — think of Šefčovič, who came here, or any other commissioner coming to sign an agreement negotiated over months.
On the very eve of the signing, the Council votes in that manner, forcing the foreign minister on the other side to first invent an unavoidable prior commitment and then, years later, tell RTV on camera: ‘What was I supposed to come here for? San Marino didn’t want the agreement.’
The lowest point in our history was 2005. Look at the political make-up of that government and that majority: it was quite similar to today’s. Speaking for the PSD, there was a newly formed PSD, and the Christian Democratic Party — so a configuration more or less mirroring today’s, which includes the PSD, Libera and the Christian Democratic Party.
There was an extraordinary government, born precisely out of major political instability. Caused by what?
Perhaps by a vulnerability to outside actors who, over the years, had influenced Sammarinese politics.
The recent convictions in the CIS affair, published no later than last week, confirmed what the CIS parliamentary inquiry commission had already put in writing: in certain years, especially those years, there were people acting in their own interest in order to steer politics and, unfortunately — as in the case of the failed agreement with Italy — to push it towards disastrous choices.
In that instance we have the former owner, majority shareholder and chairman of Banca CIS, Marino Grandoni. We know his political history, his connections, and how he operated.
We have a former Law Commissioner, Buriani, who later became a central figure in Sammarinese ‘Tangentopoli’ — the bribery scandal — and who received a sentence of four years and two months, which I believe must be combined with other convictions.
Then come the other officials of the Central Bank.
I say all this to show that what we inherit today is the product of truly dramatic historical turning points. History does not always repeat itself, but there are at times dynamics that might suggest it could. My historical digression is meant precisely to prevent similar paths from recurring, because it took us so many years to get here — it was a real ordeal.
There was the black list, then the 2014 tax reform, which marked a fundamental turning point and opened the way back onto the white lists. Even before that, there had been a shift in direction, with the renunciation of corporate anonymity and banking secrecy — a story we already know well and that I won’t go over again.
I simply want to stress that, at the time of the agreement with Italy, those who opposed it invoked the loss of sovereignty, because we would have had to adopt the main Italian and EU regulations in the financial field.
My question is this: on 19 October 2026, when the Association Agreement with the European Union is signed, what does the main dossier — the financial one — say? It says we have fifteen years to become compliant, to use today’s jargon — which was exactly what was envisaged in the 2005 agreement. So the issue is still the same one.
But we cannot afford to take all that time.”
