Sale of electricity and gas to the Post Office: government blocks opening to utilities but battle is ready in Parliament

Another game concerning the electricity and gas market in Italy is about to get underway. The decree with fiscal and economic measures passed at the beginning of August, better known as the Omnibus Decree, has arrived at the budget and finance committees in the Senate for conversion into law, which must take place by mid-October. In the measure, a rule has entered that is destined to fuel the clash triggered between the utility world and Poste Italiane by the latter's entry into the market for the sale of electricity and gas to its customers in post offices.

The utilities - also through the association Utilitalia - had appealed to the Antitrust Authority at the end of 2023, starting from the provisions of paragraph 2-quater of Article 8 of Law 287 of 1990, one of the reference laws on competition. It stipulates that companies carrying out services of general interest or operating under a monopoly regime, such as Poste Italiane, must guarantee competing companies access to the same goods and services from which they can benefit, so as to ensure 'equal opportunities for economic initiative'.

The Antitrust Authority has already expressed its opinion twice: it opened an investigation, first deciding to order Poste to suspend the conduct that prevented competitors from selling their electricity and gas products in post offices pending the conclusion of the investigation. Then, after the Council of State suspended this decision, following an appeal by Poste, in closing the investigation the Antitrust Authority partly corrected its stance. Poste had defended its position by virtue of the need, among other things, to guarantee the sustainability of the investment to realise the Polis project, which envisages the creation of one-stop shops to provide public administration services (certificates, Inps services, documents and so on) in the offices of municipalities with less than 15 thousand inhabitants. Thus, in recent weeks, the Authority has forced the larger offices to be opened to competitors.

In the course of August, therefore, came the intervention of the government which, as part of the Omnibus decree, inserted a rule repealing that article of the '90 law, removing the regulatory basis for the appeal by Poste Italiane's competitors. Who, of course, are determined to go ahead.

The main avenue will be to submit amendments to delete the article repealing the 1990 rule. The deadline for submitting amendments to the decree has been set for 13 September.