An EU concept under which member states are not allow to artificially keep alive businesses that cannot survive without aid from the state.
This blog post was first published on the Kluwer Competition Law Blog. On September 10, 2024, the European Court of Justice (ECJ or Court) sided with the European Commission (Commission) and ruled that two Irish subsidiaries of Apple Inc. received unlawful state aid from Ireland in the form of a tax advantage (Case C-465/20…
We are happy to inform you that the latest issue of the journal is now available and includes the following contributions: Joachim Englisch, Dynamic References to International Soft Law Agreements: Flexibility with Limits The European Union relies increasingly on non-binding international agreements as a blueprint for its legislation on direct taxation. This implies converting…
We are happy to inform you that the latest issue of the journal is now available and includes the following contributions: Leonie Fischer, Jessica M. Müller & Christoph Spengel, The Distorting Effects of Imputation Systems on Tax Competition in the EU The design of corporate income tax systems and thus the taxation of (cross-border)…
State aid law is closely linked to the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) commitment to creating, maintaining, and strengthening a common market in which competition is not distorted. Precisely what characterises companies that form part of a group of companies (multinational or not) is that transactions carried out between them are…
“It follows that only the national law applicable in the Member State concerned must be taken into account in order to identify the reference system for direct taxation, that identification being itself an essential prerequisite for assessing not only the existence of an advantage; but also whether it is selective in nature.”[1] With this statement,…
The Champions League is back in town and tonight, its iconic hymn echoes through the speakers of Europe’s greatest clubs’ mostly empty stadiums: “Die Meister! Die Besten! Les grandes équipes! The champions!” To my personal delight, I’ve always found football more fun than I found it to be important. Like every year, my favourite and local FC…
After the initial relief that followed upon reaching a Trade and Cooperation Agreement between the European Union and the United Kingdom on Christmas Eve, we slowly see how this treaty is going to affect the tax domain. In this blog I will briefly focus on the area of fiscal state aid, i.e. the regulation of…
With the General’s Court ruling on July 15, 2020, a first step has been taken in the question whether the Irish government has provided Apple with State Aid. So far, the General Court has ruled that the Commission has not been able to prove that the Irish government has provided State Aid to Apple. The…
Some cases just have it all; the Apple case is one of them. First, size: at more than thirteen billion euros, the recovery order Ireland had to enforce dwarfed the previously biggest one (EDF, at around one billion euros). Second, international political implications: the case ignited transatlantic tensions between the EU and the USA, both…
In the aftermath of the surge in COVID-19 related government support to businesses and just days after UK Brexit negotiators announced not to extend the deadline for the ongoing negotiations with the European Union, the European Commission launched its “White Paper on levelling the playing field as regards foreign subsidies” on 17 June 2020. It…
The decisions of European Court of Justice (CJEU) in the Vodafone and Tesco cases[1] were eagerly awaited by many interested in EU tax law. It was expected that the CJEU would answer the question whether progressive turnover-based business taxes levied on certain sectors of the economy are compatible with EU law, more specifically with the…
The General Court of the European Union has issued two awaited rulings in the Starbucks[1] and Fiat[2] cases. The length and the depth of the analysis made by the judges of the General Court should be acknowledged, even if certain key issues are perhaps too rapidly dealt with. Although the Commission lost in Starbucks, the…
William Byrnes, Texas A&M University School of Law* (33-page draft research available on SSRN) Howdy! Earlier today the General Court of the European Court of Justice (EGC) sided with Starbucks’ transfer pricing analysis of its Dutch coffee roaster, and thus against the European Commission’s approach. Thus, I feel that my transfer pricing research about this…
I have received several requests this July 4th holiday in the U.S. about my initial thoughts on the EU Commission’s 56-page published (public version from earlier this week) State Aid preliminary decision with the reasoning that The Netherlands government provided Nike an anti-competitive subsidy via the tax system. My paraphrasing of the following EU Commission…
