The Court of Appeals in Rome today issued its ruling in favor of TIM with respect to the dispute, which began in 1998, over the restitution of the concession fee for that year, the one following the liberalization of the sector, as requested by the company. The Prime Minister's Office, which will thus have to compensate the TIM Group for a sum of approximately 528 million euros, plus interest, monetary revaluation and litigation costs totaling approximately 1 billion euros, announced in a press note that it "will file an appeal to the Supreme Court and request the suspension of the executive effects of the ruling”. For its part, TIM announced that it would immediately initiate procedures to recover the amount and recalled that the Court of Justice of the European Union had intervened on the matter on several occasions, "pointing out the contrast between the directive on the liberalization of the telecommunications market and the national rules that had extended for 1998 the obligation to pay the fee to be borne by the sector concessionaires”, as the Group wrote in a press note. Specifically, in 2020, the European judiciary ruled that the EU regulatory system "did not allow a national regulation," TIM continued, "to extend the obligation imposed on a telecommunications company, previously a concessionaire (such as TIM), to pay a fee calculated on the basis of turnover for the 1998 financial year; it only allowed for the demand for payment of administrative costs related to the issuance, management, control and implementation of the general authorization and individual licensing regime”. Following the ruling, Telecom Italia's shares on the stock market jumped as high as +5.19 percent to 0.23 euros per share.
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