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i spent some of my honeymoon in rome... icecream there costs more than €50. can't see this law going down too well with tourists.

first drops of fecal mass hit the fan

Cash restrictions mean that people will be looking for other ways to transact biz. : )

has little to do with that. And a lot more to do with getting closer and closer to a cashless society.

US has its sights set on 2017, though there is 0 speak of it openly yet.

This is crazy talk... governments can say they are going to do whatever, but i have a hard time believing this actually flies, especially in Italy.  Shit I am from an Italian family, my Nonno is still kickin and gives me / my sister / cousins etc $100 every year for our birthdays.   This law would make that very act illegal..  Nonno ain't gonna start writing cheques or using paypal.

Typo? 500 euros?

I thought so too, but went to the source and confirmed 50 is correct. However, there seems to be some backpedaling taking place:

http://www.ilmessaggero.it/economia/bancomat_pagamenti_50_euro/notizie/217966.shtml

Either way...these kinds of restrictions are signs of fiscal desperation, and will drive people to learn and adopt Bitcoin at a faster rate to get around the stupid rules.

Soo much for freedom *uch*  ::)

Freedom?  In Italy?   ::)

If enough Italians wanted to be free, they would have long ago hung from a tall tree the obscenely rich creepy old charlatan in the Vatican.

These are Romans after all; they voted fairly recently for actual capital F Fascism, 2000 years after trading their Republic for an Empire.

so what will happen to all private holders of PM-s ?

how would they spend gold and buy a car ?

It's not a typo, it's right, 50€

but i'm still unsure if that will pass. There are a lot of things that have been proposed and successfully happily refused. I strongly doubt that will pass.

No fucking way this passes.

The law is a bit messy to be onest: in fact the text say that a shop is forced to accept an electronic payment for every transaction over 50€ if the customer request so, not that is banned the cash transaction in se.
The big trouble is that POS in Italy will cost a lot of money to shop, specially for little ones (something in the 20-40€/month + a fee for every transaction from 2 to 4% for bancomat and up to 5-6% for credit cards,). A small shop will don't survive all that added costs (in some cases the fees will be higher than the earnings: on a phone card sold at 50€ there will be less than 0,5€ of margin but 1€ at least of fees, so for a PC sold at 500€  on wich there is a 60-70€ of earning but 10-20€ of fees).
Big shops and supermarket have a big discount on fees (usually the pay a fixed monthly fee so the higher is the volume of money cashed by POS the less it will cost for every € processed): is a kind of law written to help banks and big owners (the fact that our prime minister is a member of Bildberg Group and is a Goldman Sachs advisor and Moody's one it's just a coincidence )

I feel sorry for you.

The law dosent talk about the willing of the buyer, the buyer is forced to use electronic money.
They are simply lowering the limit, that should be 1000 as of now.

ercolinux is right

It's still unclear if it is "buyer are forced to use electronic money" or "seller must accept eletronic money" for transactions over 50€

and it's still unclear if this will pass at all or not.

I heard this news 2/3 times, and it seems that the seller must accept electronic money IF the buyer wants AND IF the transaction is over 50€
Anyway as Gabi said it isn't already a law.

Nither option is a good sign. A forced use of electronic purchases serves only to further subsidize the banks' income on the backs of the people..

Whether it passes or not now, they will find a way to move in this directon eventually. This gets it on the books for them, where it can appear to be something that there is a choice in now. Later they will mandate it behind closed doors.

And you can bet through aggressive marketing at the consumer level the buyers will want this. They will be convinced it is better, safer, etc...

Oh, I don't know about that...
It might just mean that more merchants will take bitcoin. After all, 50€ is only:
http://btcticker.appspot.com/mtgox/50.00eur2btc.png

Hope that was a "as much ice cream as you can carry" offer  :D
Of course inflating prices for tourists is national sport, but I never paid a single ice cream more that 3€.

As for the actual topic, I really cannot understand how they hope it could work. If you are a law-abiding citizen, you just have an expense added. If you are a criminal already ignoring tax laws (as many are), you will wholeheartedly laugh at just one more law to ignore. I am afraid I must agree with

...and to think the members of Parliament are arguing on ways to convince him to be president for another 5 years, in spite of the fact that he says he doesn't want to!

Well, the actual text of the law is not yet decided in detail it seems. Would be so great if they were forced to take any kind of electronic payment -including Bitcoin  ::)

so more and more people are going to be forced into using banks

good...good...

Looks like those crazy conspiracy theorists were right.

AFAIK, the neighbouring country of Slovenia already has a ban on cash transactions over €50.