Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi said he intends to cut the TV licence fee to fund state broadcaster RAI.
“In the budget law we’ll reduce the licence fee and, at the same time, we’ll say that everyone has to pay it via a mechanism,” Renzi told RAI.
“Today it costs 113 euros. Next year it will cost 100 euros. Those who are honest and pay will pay less”. Renzi said this mechanism to make everyone pay the RAI fee could be the previously mooted idea of inserting it into households’ electricity bills.
Last year, the plan to insert the licence fee into electricity bills was launched in a bid to stop widespread evasion of the unpopular levy. But the government did not have enough time to include the measure in the 2015 budget bill.
Meanwhile, consumer groups oppose the inclusion of the RAI licence fee in the utility bill.
