Roundup: Italian media react positively to financial transparency accord with Vatican City

Italian media on Thursday reacted positively to a new agreement signed between Italy and the Vatican City to cooperate on fiscal matters that they described as the result of a reform process to ensure maximum financial transparency.

Italy was the first State with which the Vatican signed such an accord in line with the most updated international standards for exchange of financial information, Italian Economy Minister Pier Carlo Padoan was quoted as saying by Milan-based Corriere della Sera newspaper.

According to the terms of the accord, the Vatican and Italy agreed to a full exchange of "relevant information" on fiscal matters dating back to 2009.

The agreement also confirmed that all extra-territorial Vatican property will continue to be exempt from Italian property tax, as agreed in 1929.

The move has added "more solid institutional and legal constraints" to the historical relation between Italy and the Vatican, the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano wrote.

The accord, the newspaper underlined, is especially important for the exchange of information but will also ease the work of the Italian tax authorities and provide "an important service to all those physical and juridical persons resident in Italy who ... carry out financial activities within the Vatican territory."

In fact there are many employees as well as religious institutes and congregations inside the Vatican along with organizations dealing with works of church or charity, L'Osservatore Romano noted.

Rome-based la Repubblica newspaper said the agreement marked the fall of the "last fiscal and banking wall" in Italy and was the fruit of "an intense diplomatic effort" pushed by the "new course" of Pope Francis who has particularly focused on transparency in the Vatican since he was elected in March 2013.

Panorama weekly magazine defined the accord as "a new decisive step forward for a more efficient fight against tax evasion."

The move followed on from similar accords signed recently by Italy with Switzerland, Liechtenstein and the Principality of Monaco, Panorama recalled.

It may seem strange, La Stampa newspaper noted, that Italy and the Vatican though living "in symbiosis" have waited so long before signing such an agreement.

"But the economic crisis - and also the need to combat terrorism and drug trafficking - have led all Western States to tighten up their rules," the Turin-based newspaper stressed adding they "do not want to miss resources that are essential for budgets, thus want to intercept illegal money flows."

Though not being a so-called "tax haven," the Vatican nonetheless had created the possibility of illicit trafficking due to the presence of different laws and money transfer through a boundary, La Stampa pointed out. Endit