Telecom Italia (TIM) has edged closer to completing the sale of its subsea cable unit Sparkle to a consortium led by the Italian treasury for €700 million ($826m).

On the same day that the European Commission (EC) approved Orange’s planned buyout of its Spanish JV partner, the EC also gave its blessing to TIM to sell Sparkle.

TIM agreed to sell the unit to Italy’s Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF) along with Retelit, a company controlled by the Asterion fund, last year.

According to the EC, the planned sale is not deemed to be a threat to competition “in the markets where the companies operate.”

“In particular, the Commission found that in all the aforementioned markets where the parties’ activities overlap horizontally, their combined market shares would remain moderate and that several viable alternative suppliers would exist,” said the EC.

“Furthermore, the Commission concluded that the resulting company would have neither the ability nor the incentive to exclude competing backhaul providers. The notified merger was examined under the normal merger control procedure.”

Sparkle operates more than 600,000km (372,822 miles) of cables that connect countries across Europe and the Americas. Italy is seeking to bring this network under state ownership as part of a plan from Giorgia Meloni’s government to take control of more strategic assets.

TIM has previously said it expects to complete the sale during the first half of this year.

The telco has sold off other key segments of its business in the last 18 months. In January of last year, the Italian government approved TIM’s planned sale of its fixed line network to KKR, worth €22 billion ($26bn).