Is it still possible to exchange lire into euros? What can be done

It may happen that you open a drawer and find some lire banknotes, no longer in circulation for the past 20 years. When the amount is large, many ask themselves: can lire still be exchanged for euros? It is not such a simple question that the Constitutional Court and the Court of Cassation have had to deal with on several occasions, recalls laleggepertutti.it. This is because the law that made the deadline for requesting the change expire in 2012 was declared constitutionally illegitimate. Furthermore, it is necessary to deal with the usual rules on the prescription of rights, which apply since the lira is a currency that no longer has legal tender and therefore can no longer be exchanged on sight: the Bank of Italy and all institutions private creditors may refuse to accept it, if the request was submitted after the date established by law. So there are those who took legal action against their bank, when the latter no longer wanted to change the lire into euros, or against the State, because it did not allow this possibility. An original solution to one of these cases came with a new sentence of the Supreme Court: the prescription can be interrupted, and therefore the period starts running all over again; but you have to prove that you have made – at the time, not today for the first time – a timely request for an exchange, before the limitation period matured. If you succeed, you still have time to be able to change the lire held into euros. Exchange lire into euros: what does the law say? With the introduction of the euro, the lire ceased to be legal tender. The law had imposed, as the deadline for the conversion into euro of banknotes and coins denominated in lire, on February 28, 2012. This deadline, however, was brought forward to December 6, 2011 by a subsequent law decree issued as a matter of urgency, with immediate effect. In this way, many citizens who still had liras in their hands, trusting in the previous and broader term, were “burned” and were prevented from changing them into euros. Thus, in 2015, the Constitutional Court intervened, declaring the illegitimacy of the new rule in the part in which it provided for the abrupt anticipation of the terms useful for making the change. To implement the ruling of the Consulta, the Ministry of Economy and Finance, in 2016, issued a decree allowing the exchange of lire into euros to those who had requested it in the period between 6 December 2011 and 28 February 2012. . How to change lire into euro The Bank of Italy specifies on its website that it is still possible to change lire into euro on condition that the applicant proves that he / she has submitted the exchange request between 6 December 2011 and 28 February 2012. (for those who had previously presented it, the change is always allowed, without any doubt of interpretation). The exchange request must be proven with a written and signed application, submitted to your credit institution or directly to the Bank of Italy, at the head office or one of its peripheral branches, also via Pec or e-mail. this request, or is unable to prove it, can no longer obtain the exchange of lire in euros. These rules are valid only in Italy, because, for the other European Union countries that have adopted the euro, each state has independently decided its own rules to set a possible deadline for the possibility of converting the national currencies previously used into euros ( German mark, French franc, Spanish peseta, etc.). Exchange of lire into euros: statute of limitations The new sentence of the Court of Cassation that we anticipated at the beginning affirmed that the general rule of ten-year prescription applies (sanctioned by art. 2946 of the Civil Code) in order not to lose the right to change the lire in euros. This principle, however, must be coordinated with the special legislation that we have examined: therefore, you must prove that you have submitted a timely request for change to the bank, in order to stop counting the limitation periods before the fateful 10 years have passed. these criteria, the Supreme Court definitively rejected the request of a citizen who had requested to change 110 million lire owned. The Ermellini explain that “the declaration of unconstitutionality of the abbreviation of the term has revived the previous term”; therefore it was judged “correct the bank’s thesis, according to which it was necessary to demonstrate that within that period (February 28, 2012), that is the original one and returned into force after the ruling of the Constitutional Court, the conversion of the banknotes had been formally requested”. Nothing to do, therefore, for those who asked for the exchange of lire into euros for the first time after February 28, 2012.