Tim convinces the Supreme Court and wins. In fact, the long legal battle, which lasted almost 25 years, between Tim and the Italian Government for a concession fee paid in 1998. The Court of Cassation rejects the appeal presented by the Presidency of the Council of Ministers and definitively confirms the decision of the Court of Appeal of Rome of April 2024 which established the repayment of the fee, of just over 500 million euros, plus the reimbursement of the revaluation and accrued interest, for a total of just over 1 billion euro.
Tim wins in the Supreme Court: what happens next?
A sum that the group has in fact already collected in July (995,4 million euros) when it securitized the credit with Unicredit and Santander Furthermore, it will not have a negative impact on public finances because a fund with over €2,2 billion has been established to cover both domestic and European disputes, as Minister Giancarlo Giorgetti recalled in October during the hearing before the Budget Committees of the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate on the DPFP.
The greater financial flexibility that comes from the reimbursement of the fee, starting from a lever (the debt/EBITDA ratio of 2) that is already favourable and now with the confirmation of having new resources available, opens up a series of possibilities including that of dusting off a project that theto Pietro Labriola kept in the drawer for over a year, the repurchase and cancellation of savings sharesEliminating an obsolete instrument (which requires the company to distribute a dividend) would allow for increased cash flow and a streamlined corporate structure.
Tim and the concession fee paid in 1998
La the issue of the canon dates back to 1998, the year after the sector's liberalization, when the Budget Law for the following year established the payment of a mandatory contribution to telecommunications operators based on turnover, replacing the now-inapplicable concession fee. The group was asked to pay €528,7 million: €385,9 million from Telecom Italia and €142,8 million from the then Telecom Italia Mobile.
In 2000 the company presented an appeal against the implementing decree which dictated the methods for the payment of the contribution to the Lazio Regional Administrative Court, which referred the decision to the European Court of Justice: in February 2008 from Luxembourg a ruling in favor of the telephone group arrived, which deemed the fee "undue." Meanwhile, in 2003, Telecom had requested a refund from the Lazio Regional Administrative Court, which, in a December 2008 ruling, denied the request, though not reversing the European ruling. Telecom appealed this 2008 ruling to the Council of State, and the decision, received in November 2009, was again denied. Hence the final stage, the appeal to the Court of Appeal.
