30 April 2015

The benchmark for assessing the legitimacy of any tax measure is the overall tax regime of the country in question, while the tax regimes of other Member States appear to be irrelevant in this context. A more favourable tax regulation than those in force in a different country — as, for instance, a lower tax rate — may well entail a benefit for the interested businesses and shall have, as a rule, an impact on their position vis-à-vis their competitors. But this should be immaterial to the purpose of the regulation of state aid, so long as it affects all the economic actors and all the manufactures present in the relevant country and therefore it does not raise issues of selectivity.