TGUE dismisses appeal on tax exemption applied in the Port of Bilbao
Brussels, Dec 14 (EFE) Basque Country and partial to the rest of Spain on the benefits generated by the port authorities.
The Bilbao port authority argued that the tax exemptions must be analyzed in the context of the Spanish port system, which establishes a principle of self-sufficiency, and that it does not constitute State aid contrary to the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, which together with the Treaty of the European Union in accordance with the constitutional basis of the European Union.
Currently, Bilbao is the only port authority in Bizkaia and, therefore, the only beneficiary of the alleged state aid to the Basque Country.
Thus, in its ruling today, the General Court goes beyond the fact that the tax exemption of Bizkaia can provide an advantage to the port authority of Bilbao and, strangely, it has not been possible to demonstrate that the tax exemption from which it benefits is not a measure selective .
In his sentence, he assured that the Commission “correctly” left that the Spanish port authorities operated in the markets in which there was competition.
Therefore, according to the court, the tax exemption gave the Basque port authorities an advantage over their competitors, to the extent that they can improve their competitive position in these different markets.
Given that Spanish ports participate in intra-community trade, the tax exemption may affect trade between member states, argued this Luxembourg-based court of first instance.
The General Court recalled that aid that is intended to relieve an undertaking of the costs of its day-to-day management or of its normal activities, which it should normally have borne, distorts, in principle, the conditions of competition.
The case dates back to July 2013, when the Commission services sent a questionnaire to the Member States in order to obtain an overview of the operation of the ports and the corporate tax regimes applicable to them.
In a preliminary opinion, Brussels informed the Spanish authorities that the tax exemptions appeared to constitute state aid incompatible with the internal market.
Madrid submitted its observations and proposed to suppress the existing measures and replace them with a tax deduction of an import equivalent to the amounts invested in port infrastructures.
But, on January 8, 2019, the Commission issued a Decision in which it concluded that the tax exemptions were existing State aid incompatible with the internal market.
Therefore, to the Spanish authorities to abolish the total or partial tax exemptions from corporate tax, something that Spain unconditionally maintained in October of the same year 2019.
In its claim, the Bilbao port authority requested before the General Court the annulment of all the decisions, alleging that the tax exemption of Bizkaia does not constitute an advantage, that the Commission did not carry out a complete analysis of the available data, that its tax exemption does not distort competition and does not affect trade between Member States; that it is not selective either and that it is compatible with the internal market.
Arguments that the General Court rejected in its opinion, which can be appealed. EFE
cat/jug/pi
(More information on the European Union at euroefe.euractiv.es)
� EFE 2022. The redistribution and redistribution of all or part of the contents of Efe services is expressly prohibited, without the prior and express consent of Agencia EFE SA