Pierpaolo Rossi-Maccanico

European State Aid Law Quarterly, Volume 14 (2015), Issue 3, Page 371 - 381

In line with its commitment to use State aid rules in accompanying Member States’ coordinated action responding to harmful tax competition internationally, the Commission has recently opened a new wave of State aid proceedings to review Member States' preferential tax regimes for multinational undertakings (MNE). Four proceedings concern individual tax rulings, going under the name of Advanced Pricing Agreements (APAs) and appear to be at variance with the existing theories justifying the power of tax administrations to make the appropriate corrections to the declared value of cross border transactions between related entities within the same MNE (transfer pricing). The article considers that SA reviews of individual APAs cast legal uncertainty on a large number of tax assessments, and accordingly a new procedural framework is required to restore legal certainty to an area of State aid control, which puts into question the proper implementation of the transfer-pricing rules by Member States. If it wants to get serious on its commitment to bring fairness in cross border taxation of MNEs, the Commission should adopt a framework for individual tax rulings to help Member States in fulfilling their obligations about advance notification to the Commission of potential fiscal aids. To this effect, Article 106(3) TFEU provides the Commission with a special legislative empowerment designed to clarify Member States' obligations, when these are granting special tax rights to private undertakings, as the author argues is the case for APAs granted to MNEs. Keywords: Notion of Aid, Imputability, Advantage, Selectivity

Pierpaolo Rossi-Maccanico

European State Aid Law Quarterly, Volume 11 (2012), Issue 2, Page 443 - 448

Commission & Kingdom of Spain v Government EStAL 2|2012 ernment of Gibraltar & UK: Annotation 443 I. Introduction By its landmark judgment delivered on 15 November 20111 in joined cases C-106/09P and C-107/09P, European Commission and Kingdom of Spain v. Government of Gibraltar and United Kingdom, the Court of Justice (hereinafter “the ECJ”) has provided the most significant illustration to date of the fundamental notion of selectivity in State aid review

Pierpaolo Rossi-Maccanico

European State Aid Law Quarterly, Volume 8 (2009), Issue 4, Page 18

I. Background: Common Market and Direct Taxation The establishment of an internal market is the quintessential objective of the EU Treaty, which has introduced a legal order that is a self-sufficient body of law binding on Member States, their citizens and courts1. Creating a larger common market by linking the Member States into an internal market, where economic activities are exercised as if they were carried out in a single one, immediately a

Pierpaolo Rossi-Maccanico

European State Aid Law Quarterly, Volume 8 (2009), Issue 2, Page 16

I. Introduction This article aims at broadening the ongoing debate about the selectivity notion as applied to the area of fiscal aids by providing a different and slightly innovative perspective to certain findings resulting from the recent Community practice in reviewing business tax measures. One way to grasp the selectivity issue relating to State aid review of fiscal measures is in the notion of “indirect selectivity”. This is the selectivity that

Pierpaolo Rossi-Maccanico

European State Aid Law Quarterly, Volume 6 (2007), Issue 2, Page 16

I. Introduction – fiscal State aids Under the Community system of State aid review set by the EC Treaty, it is for the Community judicature rather than the Commission to interpret the notion of State aid as provided in Article 87(1) EC. The application of these rules to measures relating to direct business taxation however is a far more complex process than the normal examination of direct subsidies because it involves not only Community law principle

Pierpaolo Rossi-Maccanico

European State Aid Law Quarterly, Volume 6 (2007), Issue 1, Page 17

I. Harmful tax competition and the Fiscal Aid Notice 1. The Code of Conduct The application of State aid rules to preferential business taxation is a growing area of Community law, placed at the intersection between competition and direct taxation, in which the Courts rather than regulators have clarified the meaning of the State aid prohibition with respect to tax measures. The ground for expansion of State aid control in the tax area was define