No "granting of privileges": the exemption from the payment of ICI (the Council Tax) for the Church and "all those bodies that are neither State nor market" makes it possible to provide "assistance and social services to the weakest segments of the population", that would otherwise receive none. Giuseppe Dalla Torre, rector of the Catholic University Lumsa of Rome, explains to SIR the terms of the debate about the alleged tax concessions that the Church is granted in Italy, about which the Executive of the European Union seems to have asked the Government "to give more details", in addition to those of 25th June. "The European Union recalls the jurist has no jurisdiction over the relations between the State and the Churches. Every State has its own legislation covering such relations, according to its own traditions and the conditions of its Churches, which are widely different. This is laid down by art. 52 of the EU Treaty, which has not been enforced". Any EU’s "initiative" therefore "can only concern the exemption from the payment of ICI (the Council Tax): a problem that does not concern the Holy See, but the Italian Church if any, because such tax concession set forth by a legislative decree issued by Amato’s Government in 1992 concerns all those bodies, associations or religious confessions which have social, non-profit purposes" (continued)
