The grand culmination of a historic license fee disagreement sees Telecom Italia (TIM) emerging victoriously with a €1 billion reward garnered from the Italian government. This rewarding verdict, passed by the Rome Court of Appeal, closed the dispute that had spanned over a decade.
The roots of this controversy can be traced back to 1997, when the Italian telecoms domain underwent liberalization. The following year, TIM was coerced to pay a hefty license fee amounting to €500 million. However, since 2009, the telecom giant fiercely contested the legitimacy of this fee as it believed that the market liberalisation process essentially removed the need for such fees.
The intricate details of the dispute were made publicly available through a press release by TIM. According to the document, the Court of Justice of the European Union had intervened several times throughout the long-standing dispute.
The press release quotes, “In particular, in 2020, the European judiciary ruled that the EU regulatory system did not permit a national regulation to extend for the year 1998 the obligation imposed on a telecommunications company, previously a concessionaire (such as TIM), to pay a license fee calculated on the basis of its revenues.” This stance by the European judiciary significantly strengthens TIM’s argument against the imposed fee, steering the course of the debate towards its favorable outcome.
The court’s decision has immediate effect, putting TIM in an advantageous spot to swiftly commence proceedings to recover the awarded sum. Nevertheless, the Italian government, unwilling to call it quits, confirmed a statement that they intend to challenge the court’s ruling. They further requested the court to withhold its decision until the final appeal is heard.
