12/10/2005 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission has confirmed that on Monday, it received from the Italian authorities a letter calling upon it to look into the validity of the takeover bid made by Gas Natural for Endesa, in so far as the operation will have an impact on the Italian market. "We have received a request from the Italian competition authorities and we are looking into it", said Jonathan Todd, spokesperson to Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes. A few weeks ago, the Commission already received a similar request from the Portuguese authorities, asking it to investigate the effect of the operation on the Portuguese market. At the same time, the Commission had been asked by Endesa to examine the impact of the operation on all the markets in question (including the Spanish market). It is worth noting that the Spanish company Gas Natural (turnover of 6.26 billion EUR in 2004) made a takeover bid of a value of 22.55 billion EUR for the fellow Spanish Endesa (turnover of 17.64 billion EUR in 2004).