DHL Wins Before Italian Constitutional Court

Cleary Gottlieb successfully represented the Deutsche Post/DHL group in proceedings before the Constitutional Court.

The court acted on an application by the Piedmont Regional Administrative Court for a preliminary ruling on the issue of constitutionality of Italian legislation concerning companies’ obligation to pay an annual fee in order to contribute to the operating costs of the national Transport Regulation Authority (the ART).

In an interpretative ruling issued on April 7, 2017 (Judgment No. 69/2917), the court clarified, regarding the identification of persons required to pay contributions, that the term “operators of infrastructure and regulated services” in Article 37(6)(b) of Legislative Decree No. 201/2011 is limited to economic operators in relation to which the ART has actually carried out activities through which it exercises its remit under the relevant rules; that is, those companies operating in regulated markets characterized by special features that may justify ex ante the ART’s regulatory intervention.

The court also ruled that the amount of the contribution must be correlated to the operational needs of the ART and not exceed what is sufficient to cover the overall needs of the ART.