State Aids, Tax Rulings, and Multinational Firms: A View from Europe

As U.S. states eagerly offer incentives in an effort to win the sweepstakes for Amazon's HQ2, it is worth revisiting the very different world in Europe. In 2016 the European Commission (EC) decided that Ireland's favorable tax treatment of Apple was illegal state aid that distorted competition, and the Commission has ordered Ireland to recover €13 billion. The Apple case is one of several similar cases recently brought by the EC, in connection with both U.S. firms and European ones, including Starbucks, FIAT, McDonald's, and, most recently, Amazon itself. The U.S. Treasury, in turn, has expressed its concerns regarding the EC's approach in this area, particularly as applied to U.S. companies, in a white paper issued in August 2016. Professor Amedeo Arena discusses these issues, addressing the EC decisions and their appeals before EU courts, the U.S. Treasury white paper's objections to the EC approach, the EU legislator's recent initiatives to increase the transparency of tax rulings, and the procedural aspects of the recovery of the alleged state aids, against the background of the codification of EU administrative procedure

The Reform of the Audiovisual Media Services Directive

This presentation concerns the reform of the Audiovisual Media Services Directive (Directive 2010/13/EU) and takes into account the Commission's reform proposal (June 2016), as well as the European Parliament's amendments and Council's progress report (November 2016). Special attention is paid to the amendments to the material scope of the directive, the rules on circumvention of stricter national rules, the protection of minors, audiovisual commercial communications, and the new provisions on national regulatory authorities

Policy europee, Unione europea e partecipazione

La relazione esamina, attraverso l'analisi controfattuale, l'incidenza del diritto dell'Unione europea nella sfera giuridica dei cittandini europei

The Italian Council of State rules on the issue of dominant firms' duty to supply essential information beyond the requirements of sector regulation (BCS)

On 11 January 2013, Italy’s highest administrative court handed down an important ruling on the issue of the dominant firms’ duty under Article 102 TFEU to grant their competitors access to essential information when sector regulation encourages such a disclosure. Reversing an earlier judgment by the Latium Regional Administrative Court, the Council of State upheld the decision of the Italian Antitrust Authority (“IAA”) in the A415 - Sapec Agro / Bayer-Helmcase, which had imposed a fine of over EUR 5 million on two companies of the Bayer Group, Bayer Cropscience AG and Bayer Cropscience Ltd. This note examines the Council of State's ruling in the light of the relevant EU courts case-law on refusal to license and assesses its impact on the IP/antitrust interface

Primacy: three (not so) unshakable certainties about a foundational principle of EU Law

Although the primacy of the law of the European Union over that of its Member States has long been a debated topic, most scholars agree on at least three issues: i) that this principle was first introduced by the European Court of Justice in Costa v. ENEL (1964), ii) that primacy is an absolute principle, i.e. one that admits no exceptions; iii) that primacy is feature unique to EU law, distinguishing it from the law of other international organizations. This talk seeks to examine the on-going validity of those statements on the basis of insights from previously undisclosed materials from the EU Historical Archives in Florence, the latest rulings by the ECJ and Member States’ highest courts, and comparative research involving other international organizations such as the Andean Community, SICA, OHADA, UEMOA, and CEMAC

From an Unpaid Electricity Bill to the Primacy of EU Law: Gian Galeazzo Stendardi and the Making of Costa v. ENEL

Abstract Whilst Costa v. ENEL is the starting point for most accounts of the primacy of EU law, the story of that lawsuit is still relatively unknown. What drove Flaminio Costa to sue his electricity provider over a bill of as little as £1,925 (about €22 in 2019)? Why did the small-claims court of Milan decide to involve both the Italian Constitutional Court and the European Court of Justice in such a 'petty' lawsuit? Why did those two courts hand down rulings going in opposite directions? How did the lawsuit end when it came back to the Milan small-claims court? Relying upon previously undisclosed court documents and interviews with some of the actors involved, this article seeks to shed some light on the less-known aspects of the Costa v. ENEL lawsuit, against the background of electricity nationalization in Italy at the height of the Cold War, and to assess the contribution of that lawsuit and of its 'architect', Gian Galeazzo Stendardi, to the development of the doctrine of primacy of European Union law

Editorial

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio