On 15 May, in a lecture room at the University of San Marino, two European Commission officials were explaining, slide by slide, how the Association Agreement between the Republic and the Union will work. I left classrooms behind many years ago, and this year I went back — for the Advanced Training Course in European Studies.
Two months later, on 16 July, the Council of the European Union authorised the signature of that agreement. The thing I was studying at my desk became front-page news in San Marino.
I say this as a Sammarinese before saying it as an adviser: around here, a degree of scepticism towards grand announced reforms is physiological. This country has a long tradition of importing other people's solutions — often Italy's, often late, not always the best ones. Anyone who works with businesses has learned to distrust the enthusiasm of the day.
Which is precisely why the Association Agreement deserves to be read for what it is, not for how it is being told. Because this time the mechanism is different: it is not about copying someone else's rules downstream, but about sitting at the table where the rules are applied — with a Joint Committee, safeguard mechanisms for serious difficulties, and participation in the shaping of the acts that will concern us. Whether that is good or bad can be debated. What cannot be said is that it is the usual photocopy.
The Agreement brings San Marino into the European internal market: free movement of goods, people, services and capital, under the same conditions of competition as the Member States. The Commission has called it the most comprehensive agreement the EU will have with any third country — broader than the one with Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway. It is not accession: San Marino remains a third State, with its own sovereignty and its own tax system.
For anyone running a business, four points matter.
Goods. The current customs union is replaced by full participation in free movement. For those producing and selling towards Italy and Europe this means less friction and uniform rules — and the obligation to actually comply, because supervision will no longer be merely domestic.
People and services. Freedom of establishment and freedom to provide services, in both directions. A Sammarinese professional or company will be able to operate in the Union on terms that simply do not exist today; and the reverse holds, which means more competition at home.
Capital and finance. This is where the coldest reading is needed: access to the European financial services market is not immediate — it is gradual and conditional, built on regulatory convergence, supervisory cooperation and verification of the system's soundness, with an alignment horizon of up to fifteen years. Anyone promising a financial passport by tomorrow morning has not read Protocol 3.
EU programmes. The least discussed chapter, and the one I find most interesting: participation in EU programmes with the same rights and obligations as Member State institutions and businesses, with a contribution proportionate to GDP. For Sammarinese companies, European calls for proposals have always been someone else's territory. They will stop being that — for those able to write serious projects.
The authorisation of 16 July is not the signature: it is the Union's internal green light. What follows is the signature itself, the consent of the European Parliament and the ratifications — San Marino's and the Member States'. There is, today, no official date of entry into force, and anyone stating one with confidence is guessing. We are talking years, not months.
And that is exactly the point. The time between announcement and application is the time in which a business can choose to arrive prepared or to chase. The rules that are coming are largely already written — they sit in the twenty-five technical annexes of the San Marino Protocol. Reading them now is possible. Understanding them now is an advantage.
The course I am attending is not about a qualification. It is about the fact that in a few years clients' questions will change: no longer just "how do I set up a company in San Marino", but "how do I take my Sammarinese company into Europe" — and vice versa. Those questions are answered well only by those who studied earlier, when the subject was still a Friday-afternoon university course and not a Monday-morning emergency.
In our profession, training is not a compliance requirement. It is the difference between guiding a change and enduring it alongside the client.
If you want to think ahead about what the Agreement may mean for your business, a confidential conversation commits you to nothing.
Get in touchThis note is for general information, current as of July 2026, and does not replace professional advice on a specific matter.
