Press Release: State aid: Commission requests Italy to recover €123 million of unlawful fiscal aid from nine privatised banks

The European Commission closed its in-depth investigation under EC Treaty state aid rules into the provision of Italy’s 2004 Finance Law that allowed former public-owned banks to release hidden capital gains matured during their privatisation by paying a nominal tax of 9% instead of the ordinary company tax of 37.25%. The investigation, opened in May 2007 (see IP/07/737), found that this tax scheme favoured a select group of Italian banks without objective justification under the tax system for company reorganisations in Italy. To redress the distortion of competition caused by the aid unlawfully granted, the Italian Government must recover the aid from its beneficiaries. On the basis of the circumstances of the case the Commission has limited the recovery to the difference between the tax actually paid and the tax the beneficiary banks would have had to pay, had they applied a general tax revaluation scheme provided for by the same Finance Law of 2004. The aid to recover is estimated to a total of €123 million among the nine beneficiaries.