(Jamma) This morning the hearing before the Constitutional Court on the provision – contained in the Financial Simplification Decree no. 44 of 2012 – which aimed to resolve the issue of guaranteed minimums, granting horse racing betting concessionaires a 5% discount on the sums owed. The story of the minimums - a total of one hundred million - was at the center of a long administrative dispute, the Lazio Regional Administrative Court with a series of sentences issued starting in 2009 declared them uncollectible until the so-called safeguard measures were adopted.
The provision of the Simplifications decree has therefore overturned the judgement, prompting the administrative judge – last January – to request the intervention of the Consulta. The indictment of the State Attorney, Giuseppe Fiengo, was turned on: recalling the community jurisprudence, he argued that the historical concessionaires of horse racing bets have so far enjoyed a series of privileges, first of all the extensions of the concessions. The defenses of the concessionaires have instead highlighted the market conditions in which the companies have operated so far and have disassembled the references to the Community jurisprudence. The sentence could be issued within a few weeks.
