The politics of market access: from the Roadmap to the Switzerland–EU package

The promise of 2015

On 23 February 2015 Switzerland and Italy signed in Milan a Roadmap on fiscal and financial matters, together with the Protocol amending the double taxation convention. Chapter E.II describes the tax side of this settlement: the exchange of information on request, the end of the Italian blacklists for Switzerland, the taxation of cross-border workers and the regularization of the past through Italy's voluntary disclosure programme. The Roadmap was a set of political commitments without legal force. Its annex on "ongoing dialogue" envisaged a dialogue on possible solutions to improve cross-border market access for wealth management services.¹ For the Ticinese banks this was the counterpart of their acceptance of the exchange of information. They had given up banking secrecy towards Italy, and they expected in return the right to serve declared Italian clients from Lugano.

The expectation was disappointed almost at once. Italy implemented MiFID II by Legislative Decree No. 129 of 3 August 2017, which introduced the branch requirement for retail clients from 3 January 2018.² The Federal Council's report of 27 October 2021, drawn up in response to a postulate of the Ticino National Councillor Marco Romano, recorded that Switzerland had repeatedly drawn Italy's attention to the fact that the abolition of the cross-border access regime in favour of a branch requirement was an obstacle to any improvement. The Swiss banking sector had proposed a bilateral agreement permitting cross-border wealth management for private clients without a branch.³ The report concluded that most commitments of the Roadmap had been fulfilled, but it listed three open issues: market access for banks, the remaining Italian blacklist of 1999 for natural persons and the revision of the double taxation convention. The State Secretariat for International Finance (SIF) named cross-border market access without a branch requirement as its priority.⁴

Frustration in Ticino

The Ticinese banks made their disappointment public. At the annual assembly of the Associazione Bancaria Ticinese on 9 September 2021, its president Alberto Petruzzella said that the banks had waited since 2015 for Italy to keep its promises, that Switzerland had done everything agreed, and that Italy had instead made access even harder. He described the situation as close to mockery. National Councillor Rocco Cattaneo said that Italy had signed the Roadmap and therefore owed the promised access to Switzerland.⁵ The State Secretary for International Finance, Daniela Stoffel, told the same assembly that discussions with the European Union on financial services were stalled and that the talks with Italy would focus on "light branch" solutions.⁶

The blacklist issue was resolved in 2023. A decree of the Italian Ministry of Economy and Finance of 20 July 2023 removed Switzerland from the list of 1999 with effect from the tax year 2024, following the ratification of the cross-border workers agreement by Law No. 83 of 13 June 2023 (Chapter E.V).⁷ The market access issue remained. The supervisory memorandum of August 2023 improved the conditions for the institutional route, but it did not touch the branch requirement for private clients. In March 2025 the Ticino National Councillor Piero Marchesi proposed in a motion that Switzerland should make the delivery of data on cross-border workers, which Italy needs for its new health contribution on former frontalieri, conditional on full and fair access of Swiss banks to the Italian financial market as foreseen by the Roadmap. An Italian commentator replied that the opening of Swiss bank branches would create significant competition for Italian institutions, while more than 200 jobs held in Ticino, mostly by Italian citizens, were at stake.⁸

Notes

1. Federal Council, report of 27 October 2021 (above), 4 and 20. ↩
2. Legislative Decree No. 129 of 3 August 2017, implementing Directive 2014/65/EU and adapting Italian law to Regulation (EU) No 600/2014. The Federal Council's report (above), 20, dates the Italian decision to 2018, and the Ticinese banking association dated the closure to 2017 (Ticinonline, 9 September 2021, below). ↩
3. Federal Council, report of 27 October 2021 (above), 20–21. ↩
4. "Tre nodi ancora da sciogliere con Roma", RSI, 27 October 2021, https://www.rsi.ch/info/svizzera/Tre-nodi-ancora-da-sciogliere-con-Roma--1276515.html. ↩
5. Robert Krcmar, report on the ABT annual assembly, Ticinonline, 9 September 2021, https://www.tio.ch/economia/ticino/1534343/italia-ticinese-economia-abt-accesso-petruzzella-mercato-piazza. ↩
6. Chiaradonna, laRegione, 9 September 2021 (above). ↩
7. Emiliano Marvulli, "Svizzera fuori dalla black list persone fisiche", informazionefiscale.it, 3 August 2023, https://www.informazionefiscale.it/svizzera-paesi-black-list-persone-fisiche-novita-2024 (decree of 20 July 2023, Gazzetta Ufficiale No. 175 of 28 July 2023, removing Switzerland from the list in the decree of 4 May 1999 from the tax year 2024, on the basis of Law No. 83 of 13 June 2023). ↩
8. Furio Artoni, "Frontalieri e tassa sanitaria: una partita che mette in gioco il sistema bancario italiano", VerbanoNews, 19 March 2025, https://www.verbanonews.it/aree-geografiche/lombardia/2025/03/19/frontalieri-e-tassa-sanitaria-una-partita-che-mette-in-gioco-il-sistema-bancario-italiano/998796/. ↩

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.