Telecom Italia (TIM Group), headquartered in Rome, announced that the Rome Court of Appeal has settled in favor of the Group in a ruling issued Wednesday. The ruling settles a 15-year dispute concerning the restitution of the license fee paid to the Italian government in 1998, the year following the liberalization of the European Union telecommunications sector.
The amount due is equal to the cost of the original license fee, roughly $543 million, plus revaluation and accrued interest for a total of approximately $1.1 billion. The ruling is immediately enforceable. TIM said that it will initiate procedures to recover the amount in question right away. The government is also obligated to pay for various costs associated with the proceedings, MobileWorldLIive reported.
The Court of Justice of the European Union intervened on this issue on several occasions over the challenge period. The Court made clear the differences between the regulatory directive on the liberalization of the European telecom market and the national regulations that required incumbent telecom operators to pay the license fee after the EU telecom market was established in 1997.
In one instance, in 2020, the European judiciary ruled that the EU regulatory system did not permit a national regulation to extend into 1998, the requirement that incumbent telecom companies, such as TIM, pay a license fee calculated on the basis of its revenues. Rather, EU regulations only permitted national regulators to collect payment of the administrative costs associated with the issuance, management, control and implementation of the general authorization and individual license system, according to Inside Towers Intelligence.
In a statement on the ruling, the Italian government indicated it would appeal and requested the immediate suspension of the actions outlined by the Court.
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