The Council of State rejects the billboards with the average price of fuel that petrol stations have been obliged to display since last August. In sentence 1806 published today, the Council of State accepts the appeal proposed by the Ministry of Business and Made in Italy, but “as a result, in partial reform of the appealed sentence and for different reasons, it cancels article 7 of the decree ” of the Mimit of 31 March 2023, which establishes the characteristics and methods of display of the billboards containing the average prices.
What did the government decree provide?
Decree 5 of 2023 provided that those carrying out the sale of automotive fuel to the public, including those operating along the motorway network, should adequately display billboards showing the average reference prices. He had not foreseen that the update had to take place on a daily basis: this specific requirement was introduced by the decree of 31 March 2023, we read in the sentence. “This requirement, however – continues the Council of State – appears to be manifestly unreasonable and disproportionate”. «On the one hand, it is necessary to make information available in the individual sales points that the consumer can have (in a much more complete form given that it is also possible to know which distributor applies the lowest prices in the reference area) by connecting to the ministry’s website or downloading apps; on the other hand, the related information costs are borne solely by the distributors, imposing unreasonable and disproportionate burdens on them compared to the limited usefulness that the information relating to the average price, considered in itself, can have”, explains the sentence, which for this reason defines Article 7 of the “illegitimate” decree, establishing that “it must be annulled”. Furthermore, according to the State Court, the display of a plurality of prices, as already noted by the Antitrust, “can confuse the consumer instead of helping him to take the best solution in his own interest”. Upon closer inspection, the topic is truly complex.