Following COVID-19 outbreak, on March 19th, the European Commission adopted a Temporary Framework to enable Member States to use the full flexibility foreseen under State aid rules to support the economy. The legal basis for the Temporary Framework is Article 107(3)(b) TFEU, which allows the Commission to declare compatible with the single European market aid…
On 27 July 2017, the European Commission has required Belgium and France to abolish the corporate tax exemptions granted to their ports on the basis that profits by port operators must be taxed under normal national corporate tax laws to comply with European State aid rules. Therefore, if port operators generate profits from economic activities,…
On June 30, 2017, the European Commission has found that a Polish progressive tax on the retail sector is in breach of EU state aid rules. More precisely, following a complaint, the Commission opened an investigation in September 2016 concerning a Polish measure that allows companies operating in Poland in the retail sector to pay…
The 2014 General Block exemption Regulation (the “Regulation”) exempts certain categories of state aid from the requirement of prior notification to the Commission and they can be implemented by Member States without prior Commission approval, provided they meet certain requirements and they are unlikely to distort competition in the single market. The decision to widen…
On 10 November 2016, the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled that the new Spanish funding scheme for the public television system (RTVE) is not in violation of EU State aid law. Corporación de Radio y Televisión Española (RTVE) is the Spanish public radio and television broadcasting organisation, which relied on a dual…
On 3 December, the Commission announced that it launched a formal investigation into Luxembourg’s tax treatment of McDonald’s. The investigation aims to verify the concerns that two tax rulings issued by Luxembourg in 2009 provided McDonald’s with an advantageous tax treatment in violation of EU state aid rules. According to the preliminary observations of the…
On 21 October, the Commission announced its decisions whereby Luxembourg and Netherlands are found to have violated EU state aid rules, as they granted selective tax advantages to Fiat Finance and Trade and Starbucks respectively by issuing tax rulings artificially lowering the tax paid by the companies. These decisions followed in-depth investigations that were opened…
As maintained in the statement published by the Commission on 15 July, Hungary’s amended ‘food chain inspection fee’ and a new tobacco tax, in particular the progressive nature of the rates based on companies’ turnover, may prove to amount to the infringement of EU state aid provisions. The Commission, concerned that companies with a lower…