The European Commission has asked the Italian authorities to recover the state aids granted in 2004 and 2005, on having considered them to be incompatible with the community regulation for his negative effect on the competition.

Mediaset, property of the Italian ex-prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, indicated that the subsidies in question "have assured advantages to the consumers, but they have not had any benefit in the economic accounts of the society, whom therefore it is not possible to ask for any restitution", according to a bulletin.

The company indicated that "it has never spent" that the community Executive "it has imposed restitutions to subjects that have benefited or direct not by implication of supposed helps of the State".

For Brussels, the subsidies, which granted to themselves the buyers or lodgers of the devices and which added an entire value superior to 200 million euros, provided an indirect advantage to the companies that operate with terrestrial sign, opposite to another type of platforms.

Nevertheless, it gave the go-ahead to the helps granted in 2006, on having thought that in this case they do not damage the competition, since they are offered for any type of decoder without importing the transmission platform.


(25/01/07)