The Italian contributions granted in 2004 and 2005 for the purchase of digital terrestrial decoders constitute state aid: the radio and television broadcasters that benefited indirectly from them are required to repay them. This was established today by a sentence issued by the Court of Justice of the European Union, which rejected the appeal presented by Mediaset against the sentence of the court of first instance which had already highlighted how the public contribution to the purchase of decoders attributed to digital terrestrial broadcasters "an indirect advantage to the detriment of satellite".
With the 2004 Budget Law, Italy had granted a public contribution of 150 euros to each user of the broadcasting service for the purchase or rental of a digital decoder, proposing it again, reduced to 70 euros, with the 2005 Budget Law. the subsidy, however, it was necessary to purchase a device for receiving digital terrestrial television signals and not one for receiving satellite signals, for which consumers would not have been able to benefit from the aid.
The EU court, in the second and final instance, rejected Mediaset's appeal, confirming that the aid from which some economic operators have benefited involves a "distortion of competition" and the States must take steps to recover it. Mediaset's argument that the EU Commission would not have allowed the establishment of an adequate methodology for calculating the reimbursement amounts was also rejected. The Court held that, according to the rules of EU law, the task of fixing the exact amount of aid to be repaid rests with the national authorities.
