After 27 years, the Supreme Court arrives: Tim will get a billion back from the State

After 27 years, Tim will get a billion euros back for the fee paid to the State in 1998. The decision was made by the Court of Cassation, which dispelled its doubts and ruled in favour of Tim on the appeal for restitution. "Tim communicates that today it has received communication regarding the ruling of the Court of Cassation confirming the restitution of the concession fee claimed for 1998, thus closing a dispute that has lasted more than 20 years," reads a note released by the tlc group. The Court of Cassation's ruling 'rejects the appeal filed by the Presidency of the Council of Ministers and definitively confirms the decision of the Rome Court of Appeal of April 2024,' the note explains. The sum due is equal to the original fee, just over EUR 500 million, plus revaluation and accrued interest, for a total of just over EUR 1 billion'. Resources that the government has already allocated in the Manovra where a 'Sentence Fund', also known as the 'one-off fund' of 2.5 billion appears. Of this, 1.5 billion is to cover the ruling on the IRAP surcharge on parent-subsidiary companies, and the remaining billion is to service this ruling. There are those who observe, in this regard, that in this game the State appears in a dual role considering that Poste rose a few days ago to 27.32% of Tim's ordinary capital.

The long legal battle between Tim and the Italian government over a concession fee that Tim paid in 1998, the year after the liberalisation of the telecommunications sector, and which it was not supposed to pay, is thus coming to an end. The long history of appeals led to a ruling by Rome's Court of Appeals in 2024 that proved the group right, but the state had appealed again to the Court of Cassation. In May, the Italian Supreme Court had postponed the final decision on the case, to make further investigations and establish whether Tim's initial claim had been submitted to the competent court. The origin of the dispute, however, dates back to 1998, the year after the liberalisation of the sector, when the Finanziaria for the following year established the payment of a compulsory contribution to tlc operators calculated on the basis of turnover, in place of the now inapplicable concession fee. The group was asked to pay EUR 528.7 million: EUR 385.9 million to Telecom Italia and EUR 142.8 million to the then Telecom Italia Mobile (Tim). In 2000, the company appealed against the implementing decree that dictated the modalities for paying the fee to the Lazio Regional Administrative Court, which referred the decision to the European Court of Justice: in February 2008, Luxembourg issued a ruling in favour of the telephone group, defining the fee as ''not due''. In the meantime, in 2003, Telecom had also applied for reimbursement to the Lazio Regional Administrative Court, which, in a ruling in December 2008, said no, though not disavowing the European ruling. Against this 2008 ruling Telecom had appealed to the Council of State and the response, which arrived in November 2009, was again negative. Hence the latest episode, that of the appeal to the Court of Appeal. "The sum due is equal to the original fee, just over EUR 500 million, plus revaluation and accrued interest for a total of about EUR 1 billion.