EU approves Italian toll road extensions
The European Commission has approved, under EU State aid rules, plans to extend two Italian motorway concessions by four years. The plan is designed to enable the concession operators to invest $8.5 billion in further mototrway projects.
The concessions – held by Autostrade per l'Italia (ASPI) and by Società Iniziative Autostradali e Servizi (SIAS) – comprise ASPI’s network and SIAS' SATAP A4 Torino-Milano motorway. SIAS will use revenues from the prolonged concession to complete the Asti-Cuneo A33 motorway. The concessionaires will have a cap of 0.5% plus inflation on potential toll increases, and a limit on the amount they can receive from an asset sale at the end of the concession.
To ensure sufficient competition in the Italian motorway sector, Italy has also committed to launch a joint tender by 2019 of a series of related, separate concessions held by SIAS (for the SATAP A21 and ATIVA motorways), which are already expired or about to expire. And initial plans to prolong concessions of other motorways held by SIAS have been dropped.
