La Court of Appeal of Rome issued a landmark ruling for Tim, ending a 15-year legal dispute. The question concerned the reimbursement of the 1998 concession fee, immediately after the liberalization of the telecommunications sector. The Italian operator announced this in a note.
The amount to be repaid, approximately 500 million euros, includes the original fee plus significant sums for revaluation and interest, totaling about 1 billion euros. The ruling, with immediate effect, requires TIM to promptly initiate the necessary actions to recover this amount.
The long legal process also saw the significant intervention of the Court of Justice of the European Union, which on several occasions highlighted the inconsistency between the directive on the liberalization of the telecommunications market and the national provisions which had extended the obligation to pay the license fee for the year 1998 for operators in the sector. In particular, in 2020 the European Court underlined that community legislation did not allow the possibility for national regulations to extend the obligation, previously imposed on telecommunications companies, such as Tim, to pay a fee calculated on the turnover for the year 1998 Only the request for coverage of administrative costs related to the issuing, management, control and implementation of general authorizations and individual licenses was permitted.
