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State Aid and Access to Sport – Lessons for VAT Law? journal article

Jacob Kornbeck

European State Aid Law Quarterly, Volume 18 (2019), Issue 2, Page 138 - 156

Whereas discussions of the applicability of EU law to the sport sector have tended to focus on the ‘specificity’ of the private rules (lex sportiva) of sports governing bodies (SGBs), embracing ‘specificity’ carries the risk of exempting specific legal entities rather than specific activities worthy of exemption because linked to specific public policy objectives. However, as this exercise has yielded dissimilar results in different areas of EU law, there is scope for one area to learn from the decisional practice and case law of another area. It is submitted that an emerging ‘access to sport’ doctrine can be identified in the field of EU State aid law, already inherent in the relevant legal requirements, including Commission Reg. 651/2014 and Notice C/2016/2946, as confirmed by the decisional practice of the Commission as well as recent case law including Alpenverein [2016] and Hamr Sport [2016]. The field of EU VAT law could benefit from some of the insights generated within State aid law for, while the legal framework is different, as defined in Article 113 TFEU, the recent case law has engendered a questionable doctrine, notably in English Bridge Union [2017], making the physicality of the activity the yardstick while, crucially, dependent on formal recognition by SGBs. The paper will argue in favour of adopting a health-enhancing physical activity (HEPA) doctrine, as already enshrined in relevant EU sport soft law and, indirectly, within the area of EU State aid law. Keywords: VAT; Sport; Specificity; Access to sport; Public policy; Health-enhancing physical activity (HEPA).

Price Increasing Tax Reductions for Electronic Newspapers journal article

Implications for State Aid Policy

Małgorzata Cyndecka, Timothy Wyndham

European State Aid Law Quarterly, Volume 17 (2018), Issue 3, Page 375 - 386

The economic implications of indirect taxation have long been understood. Reducing indirect taxes results in lower prices. This straightforward and intuitive result has been an undisputed input into State aid policy, allowing robust legal analyses of tax exemptions. However, recent advances in the economic theory of two-sided markets yield new predictions for the impact of one type of indirect tax, the value added tax (VAT), on electronic newspapers. The surprising new theoretical prediction is that reader prices increase following VAT reductions. The prediction is driven by low marginal costs and the fact that advertisers would pay more for an ad seen by more readers. We bring this insight into the State aid literature and assess the implications for State aid policy. In particular, we raise questions over the legal assessment of a Norwegian State aid scheme, where a VAT exemption for print newspapers was extended to digital newspapers. If prices go up instead of down the policy will not have the intended effect and, under the given argumentation, the aid should not be viewed as compatible with the functioning of the internal market. The economic and legal arguments we present are important for the wider European debate on whether to reduce VAT on electronic newspapers. Keywords: VAT; Electronic newspapers; Two-sided markets

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