Across the border: European law and Italian enforcement

Regulations 269/2014 and 833/2014

The European sanctions against Russia rest on two regulations of 2014, both adopted after the annexation of Crimea and amended by every package since 2022. Council Regulation (EU) No 269/2014 of 17 March 2014 contains the asset freeze. It freezes the funds and economic resources of the persons, entities and bodies listed in its Annex I and prohibits making funds available to them. Council Regulation (EU) No 833/2014 of 31 July 2014 contains the sectoral measures: the trade bans, the financial restrictions, the services bans and the price cap.¹ Both regulations are directly applicable in every member state. They apply within the territory of the Union, on board aircraft and vessels under the jurisdiction of a member state, to every national of a member state inside or outside the Union, to every legal person incorporated under the law of a member state and to any business done in whole or in part within the Union.²

For the Ticino economy the personal scope is as important as the territorial one. Many of the employees of Lugano's banks, trading houses and fiduciaries are Italian nationals, either resident in Ticino or frontalieri who cross the border every day (Chapter H.I). An Italian trader working for a Lugano company remains personally bound by the European regulations when he concludes a contract at his desk in Lugano, even if the Swiss ordinance has not yet adopted the measure concerned or has adopted it in a different form. The same applies to Italian members of the board of a Ticino company. A Swiss company with an Italian branch is bound for the business of the branch. A Swiss subsidiary of an Italian group is subject to the influence of a parent that is itself bound.³

That influence was formalized in 2024. With the fourteenth package the European Union required parent companies established in the Union to undertake their best efforts to ensure that their subsidiaries in third countries do not participate in activities that undermine the restrictive measures.⁴ Switzerland, as described above, declined to adopt the corresponding obligation for Swiss parents. Italian groups with trading or distribution subsidiaries in Ticino, which are numerous in steel, energy and the Mendrisiotto distribution economy, must therefore extend their European compliance programmes to their Swiss companies if they want to show the required best efforts. In practice the European standard governs much of the Ticino economy through ownership, employment and banking relationships, whatever the Swiss ordinance provides.

The Italian enforcement machinery

Italy implements the asset freezes through Legislative Decree No. 109 of 22 June 2007, originally adopted to combat the financing of terrorism and extended to the freezing measures of the European Union and the United Nations. The central body is the Financial Security Committee (Comitato di sicurezza finanziaria, CSF) at the Ministry of Economy and Finance, chaired by the Director General of the Treasury, which "adopts every act necessary for the correct and timely implementation of freezing measures".⁵ The Special Currency Police Unit (Nucleo speciale di polizia valutaria) of the Guardia di Finanza identifies and freezes the assets on the ground, and the State Property Agency (Agenzia del Demanio) takes custody of frozen economic resources and administers them until they are released or confiscated.⁶ Banks and other obliged entities must report freezes to the UIF within thirty days, with the names of the persons, the amount and the nature of the funds.⁷

The Guardia di Finanza combines the functions that Switzerland distributes among SECO, the customs and the police. It is a police force under the Ministry of Economy and Finance, whose mandate rests on Law No. 189 of 23 April 1959 and Legislative Decree No. 68 of 19 March 2001 and covers the prevention and investigation of financial violations and the supervision of compliance with rules of economic and political interest. It has general powers of criminal investigation and a specialized unit for currency and financial crime. In the sanctions field it identifies the assets of listed persons through land registers, ship registers and company records, executes freezes and investigates violations on the instructions of the public prosecutor. At the border its units in Como and Varese work beside the Customs and Monopolies Agency (Agenzia delle Dogane e dei Monopoli, ADM), which controls exports and imports and applies the trade bans. Licences for the export of dual-use goods and the related administrative sanctions fall to the Unit for the Authorization of Armament Materials (Unità per le autorizzazioni dei materiali di armamento, UAMA) at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.⁸

Notes

1. Council Regulation (EU) No 269/2014 of 17 March 2014, OJ L 78, 17.3.2014, Art. 2 and Annex I, https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:32014R0269; Council Regulation (EU) No 833/2014 of 31 July 2014, OJ L 229, 31.7.2014, https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:32014R0833. ↩
2. Regulation (EU) No 269/2014, Art. 17; Regulation (EU) No 833/2014, Art. 13 (both above). ↩
3. Regulation (EU) No 833/2014, Art. 13, https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/? uri=CELEX:32014R0833 (lit. a: "within the territory of the Union"; lit. c: "to any person inside or outside the territory of the Union who is a national of a Member State"; lit. d: legal persons incorporated under the law of a member state; lit. e: "any legal person, entity or body in respect of any business done in whole or in part within the Union"). ↩
4. Regulation (EU) No 833/2014, Art. 8a, inserted by Council Regulation (EU) 2024/1745 of 24 June 2024, https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:32024R1745 ("best efforts to ensure that any legal person, entity or body established outside the Union that they own or control does not participate in activities that undermine the restrictive measures"); Baker McKenzie, 14th package (above) (Swiss decision not to adopt the measure). ↩
5. Sky TG24, "Guerra Russia-Ucraina: ecco come funziona in Italia il 'congelamento' dei beni", 7 March 2022, https://tg24.sky.it/economia/approfondimenti/ucraina-russia-come-funziona-congelamento-beni; Decreto legislativo 22 giugno 2007, n. 109. ↩
6. Sky TG24, 7 March 2022 (above) (Nucleo speciale di polizia valutaria; Agenzia del Demanio "provvede alla custodia, all'amministrazione e alla gestione delle risorse congelate"). ↩
7. UIF, "Contrasto al finanziamento del terrorismo" (above) (Art. 7 para. 1 D.Lgs. 109/2007). ↩
8. Guardia di Finanza, "Polizia economico-finanziaria", https://www.gdf.gov.it/it/cosa-facciamo/polizia-economico-finanziaria ("legge di ordinamento del 23 aprile 1959, n. 189"; "decreto legislativo 19 marzo 2001, n. 68"; "prevenzione, ricerca e denunzia delle evasioni e delle violazioni finanziarie"; "vigilanza sull'osservanza delle disposizioni di interesse politico-economico"); Sky TG24, 7 March 2022 (above) (Nucleo speciale di polizia valutaria); Bennato, Sistema Penale (above) (administrative sanctions applied by the Ministry of Economy and Finance and UAMA). ↩

For general information only. This article does not constitute legal or tax advice, does not replace advice on an individual case and creates no lawyer-client relationship. It reflects the legal position as of August 2025.