TIM: Court of Appeal rules restitution of 1998 license...

TIM announces that, in a ruling issued today, the Rome Court of Appeal has settled in favor of the Group a fifteen-year dispute concerning the restitution of the license fee claimed for 1998, the year following the liberalization of the sector, and reclaimed by the Company.

The amount due is equal to the original license fee, just over 500 million euros, plus revaluation and accrued interest for a total of approximately 1 billion euros. The ruling is immediately enforceable, and TIM will immediately start procedures to recover the amount in question.

The Court of Justice of the European Union intervened on this issue on several occasions, pointing out the contrast between the directive on the liberalization of the telecommunications market and the national regulations that had extended for 1998 the obligation to pay the license fee on concessionaires in the sector. 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, but only permitted the demand for payment of the administrative costs connected with the issuance, management, control and implementation of the general authorization and individual license system.

Rome, 3 April 2024