State Aid Uncovered Blog

Introduction The favourable tax treatment of multinational companies has long been in the sights of the Commission. However, the recent judgments on Fiat [C‑885/19 P, Fiat v Commission] and Engie [C‑454/21 P, Engie v Commission] have made it clear that Commission may not rely on principles which are not recognised in the tax laws of Member States. This fundamental rule […]

Introduction In 2016, the Commission found, in decision 2016/1699, that advance tax rulings [ATRs] that had been provided by Belgium to multi-national companies [MNCs] with establishments in Belgium constituted State aid because the ATRs set the taxable income of those companies according to a hypothetical average income rather than their actual income. The profit that exceeded that hypothetical average was […]

The assessment of the Commission in an “opening decision” is only provisional. The Commission is not required to prioritise its investigations or to extend them to anyone who may be in a similar situation. The right of non-discrimination is not violated when the Commission chooses to investigate some instead of all possible cases of State aid. An individual measure that […]