The limitation on the use of cash (to a thousand euros) does not please Italian jewelers, who are asking for uniform European rules. The fight against tax evasion, which has led several governments to tighten the mandatory use of credit and debit cards, to make payments traceable, has further depressed sales, according to jewelers. “We hope that we will continue quickly on the path of adopting uniform criteria for the circulation and use of cash, involving first and foremost the EU member states, but also intervening on a broader international level”, explains the president of Federpreziosi Giuseppe Aquilino, “as, in fact, we have already partly succeeded in doing with the G8 and G20 states, which have included the issue in the agenda of their summits”.
According to Aquilino, at a European level it is important to continue to focus more and quickly on interventions that concern the disparities in conditions «with regard to transaction costs, the limits on the use of cash that are so inexplicably and unfairly discriminatory for some countries, ours first and foremost». Federpreziosi points out that there is a huge discrepancy between the threshold of one thousand euros in Italy and that of other countries such as Belgium with 15 thousand euros, Denmark (13,400 euros), France (3 thousand euros), Romania (2,300 euros), Slovenia (15 thousand euros), Spain (2,500 euros), while in the other countries there is no limit. Only in Portugal and Greece are there restrictive limits comparable to the Italian ones: one thousand euros in the first case and 1,500 in the second. “The study published by Bankitalia in January 2013 highlighted how the problem of the underground economy is not enough to explain the low use of electronic payment instruments in retail transactions but how important development factors, such as innovative capacity and per capita income, also have”, accuses Aquilini. “Our country has adapted with great sacrifices from everyone, and some categories in particular, to imposed and penalizing rules to the point that they risk compromising the possibility of recovery in a reasonably short time to allow us pure and simple survival. And here it is up to us to continue to maintain the pressure at the level of our political and financial system”.
