Italy and San Marino at loggerheads
Between Italy and San Marino, the small sovereign state located on the territory of the peninsula, relations have always been idyllic. For a month now, however, a problem has made relations between nations quite tense.
Have you ever been to San Marino? The small sovereign state which is also one of the oldest in Europe located in central Italy not too far from places such as Ancona and Riccione represents what in the geographical jargon is called “enclave” or a nation that is located included in the territory of a second nation. To visit San Marino you need a passport but many Italian citizens who have the right documents can simply take the car and go to the country.
Of course, many citizens of San Marino they do the same thing: the approximately 33,000 inhabitants of the Titan nation are used to taking the car to venture into Italy for various reasons such as work, tourism or simple curiosity. But here a question spontaneously arises: how does the procedure for notifying a fine to a citizen of San Marino who enters the Italian Highway Code work? After all, we always talk about a sovereign nation.
Recently, there has been a real case of state – a more than appropriate term given the situation – between the Italian and San Marino governments. Several citizens of the small state have protested that the way in which they have received home delivery of the fines which does not comply with local laws…
Who do we notify first?
The Union of San Marino Consumers or UCS he protested just last month for the huge number of many who have traveled from Italy to the homes of the citizens of San Marino without, however, passing through the bodies appointed to this function. Simply put, our government sent the unpaid fines within 30 days to the citizens of San Marino by regular mail.
According to the law of San Marino, the sanction it must pass through the authorities of the small state who only afterwards send the request for payment to indolent citizens within 30 days. If this does not happen, according to UCS, an offense would occur and an ambiguous situation would arise whereby a citizen of San Marino could also find a way to never pay the fine taken in Italy.
Indeed, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs he had begun negotiations on the Convention of friendship and good neighborliness of 1939 based between the two countries which, however, due to the pandemic, had not been able to proceed beyond the preliminary phase. The question may seem bizarre but it needs to be answered. Otherwise, it could create inconvenient precedents and ambiguous situations at the legal level.