(BRUSSELS) - EU competition regulators are looking into whether tax breaks for the Catholic Church in Italy break EU state aid rules after receiving complaints, a spokesman said Tuesday.

"We have addressed the Italian authorities and asked them for information about this," European Commission spokesman for competition issues Jonathan Todd told journalists.

Todd, who declined to say where the complaints that triggered the action had come from, said that tax breaks in question concerned the Church's commercial real estate activities.

However, he also said that it was too early to say whether the European Commission would launch a formal state aid investigation.

The Commission, the European Union's executive arm and top competition regulator, is responsible for policing state aid in the 27-nation bloc to see whether it threatens fair competition.

If an investigation finds that state aid is illegal, the Commission can require a member state to recover the money from the beneficiary.

Todd said that EU regulators had already looked into advantages granted to churches and he noted a similar case in Spain.

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