Italian law preventing the French group Vivendi SA from acquiring 28% of the capital of the Mediaset group, owned by Silvio Berlusconi and Fininvest, when it already controls Telecom Italia SpA, is hindering freedom of establishment in the European Union, the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled on Thursday, 3 September (Case C-719/18).
Vivendi is challenging before the Italian courts the Italian provision which, in order to safeguard information pluralism in Italy, prohibits a company whose revenues in the electronic communications sector exceed 40% of the total revenues in that sector from receiving revenues exceeding 10% of those in the 'integrated communications system' in Italy.
Relying on the reasoning of the Advocate-General (see EUROPE 12393/24), the Court takes the view that the restriction on freedom of establishment represented by the Italian provision does not meet the objective of protecting the media.
In particular, in the ‘Google’ judgment (Case C-193/18), the case-law makes a clear distinction between the production of content and its routing or transmission. Undertakings active in the electronic communications sector with control over the routing and transmission of content do not necessarily have control over the production of content.
Furthermore, the Court considers that the contested provision defines the scope of the electronic communications sector too restrictively by excluding segments of growing importance for the transmission of information such as mobile telephone retail services, other electronic communications services linked to the internet and satellite broadcasting services.
Lastly, the European judge criticises the level of the thresholds set, which are unrelated to the risk to media pluralism.
See the judgment of the Court: https://bit.ly/3blltxM (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)