EU Commission approves €1.56bn in state aid for Poste Italiane
The European Commission has given the green light to Poste Italiane to receive EUR 1.56bn in compensation from the Italian government to support its universal postal service. The European Union’s executive branch decided today that the Italian postal service should be allowed EUR 1.1bn in state aid to support nationwide postal delivery, and also a EUR 458m sum for providing reduced postal tariffs for publishers, not-for-profit organisations and for election-related mail.
The payments applied to the period 2009 to 2011.
The Commission’s antitrust officials said the state aid was in line with EU rules on public service compensation because they did not “over-compensate” Poste Italiane for providing the services, so did not cross-subsidise the company’s competitive services.
Poste Italiane, which has 146,014 employees and 14,005 post offices, generating a EUR 9.6bn turnover in 2010, notified the European Commission about the state aid patents back in June 2012.
The Commission said that because Poste Italiane alerted it to the state aid only after it had been paid, it could have been seen as “illegal” state aid.
However, officials said an investigation of the measures had concluded that the payments were compatible with EU state air rules, so the Commission will not raise objections to the payments.
