Brussels, 17/09/2015 (Agence Europe) - On Thursday 17 September (case C-367/14), the Court of Justice of the EU ordered Italy to pay a lump sum fine of €30 million and a fine of €12 million per semester of delay for failing to recover aid in the form of reductions and exonerations from social security contributions granted between 1995 and 1997 to certain firms in Venice and Chioggia. This was despite a previous Court judgment in 2011 over the same issue.
This second judgment is the final chapter in a legal saga which started in 1999, when the European Commission asked Italy to recover aid in the form of reductions in social security contributions of on average €37.7 million a year, granted to 1,645 businesses, and exemptions from contributions for a total of €292,831 a year, shared out between 165 firms. The appeals against this decision brought by dozens of the companies were declared inadmissible or rejected, first by the General Court in 2008 and then, under an appeal, by the Court of Justice in 2011. The Court also upheld a suit for failure to fulfil obligations, again in 2011 (case C-302/09), which had been brought against Italy by the Commission in 2009 for its failure to execute its decision within the timeframe granted. Noting that Italy had not complied with this judgment, the Commission then, in 2013, asked the Court to order the country to pay a lump sum fine and plus a penalty (see EUROPE 10967).
The Court has now complied with this request (see above), noting that in 2013, Italy had still not recovered the aid in dispute in full. It found that the problems encountered by the Italian government (suspension of the recovery process by the Italian courts, examination on a case-by-case basis of the aid to all of the different companies, threat of bankruptcy for some of them) did not justify the country's failure to execute the 2011 judgment. On this basis, taking account of the fact that Italy has still not recovered the full amount of the aid and has been unable validly to justify this failure to do so, the court has decided to impose a penalty of €12 million for every semester of delay in executing the judgment. Additionally, taking account of the many judgments for the late recovery of illegal aid previously handed to Italy by way of a deterrent, it has also handed the state a lump sum fine of €30 million. (Francesco Gariazzo)