Freedom Of Establishment For Companies In Europe Eu Eea

This cahier provides an overview of the freedom of establishment, one of the four freedoms central to the European Union?s single market. The book first contextualizes corporate mobility within a broader economic discussion on market access before turning to the private international law dilemmas posed by legal entities moving across borders. Next, the foundational work done to include the freedom of establishment in EU legislation is explained. The book then presents the limitations that can be imposed on this freedom and the growing body of CJEU case law that has interpreted the scope of these limitations, thereby providing the contours of the freedom of establishment itself. The book subsequently delves into the mechanisms provided under EU secondary legislation to enable legal entities to exercise their freedom of establishment, focusing particularly on cross-border mergers and the Societas Europaea. The last chapters of the book are devoted to cross-border divisions and ongoing developments in European company law that are material to freedom of establishment, most notably the 2018 proposal for a legislative framework for cross-border divisions and cross-border conversions. 0While primarily targeted at students, we hope that this book will also be of interest to anyone who seeks to have a deeper understanding of the freedom of establishment of companies, the motivations for exercising this freedom and the mechanisms that can be used to do so.

The transfer of companies’ registered office about production activities of goods and services, it is an operation in which both the EU doctrine and case law have increasingly been converging during last decade. It matches to the phenomenon of company’s “localization” (and de-localization) as a strategic leverage for managing issues into European economic system. The practice is clearly recalling the companies’ freedom of establishment for economic reasons (and tax) as the engine of the European integration that guarantees to companies the way to survive to a global market and the possibility to develop their economic strategy as well as the greater competition with foreign companies.

In today’s environment of largely globalizing national economies, international economic integration does not stop at the frontiers of the European Union. Many non-EU-based enterprises are carrying on business in the European Union through the operation of branches or subsidiaries established in EU Member States, and a large number of EU-based enterprises maintain a diversified range of investments outside the Union. Accordingly, in both inward and outward investment relationships, ‘economic openness’ is key nowadays. This legal relationship between EU Member States and the EU as a whole vis-à-vis the rest of the world is the starting point of this book. The author analyses the ‘freedom of investment’ concept between EU Member States and non-EU States under EU law, and specifically its effect on company taxation regimes, from the perspective of multinational enterprises. Focusing on the impact of the Treaty freedoms and international integration agreements on relations with non-EU Member States, this work is the first to specifically address the all-important issue: Under which circumstances can investment-related rights deriving from EU law be invoked by companies established in non-EU states? The analysis identifies the impact of the EU Treaty freedoms on six basic corporate income tax themes that are of particular interest for multinational enterprises: limitation on the deduction of interest expenses; withholding taxes on dividend, interest, and royalty payments; relief for double taxation of income received from foreign investments; CFC legislation; non-deduction of foreign losses from the domestic taxable base; and company taxation upon the transnational transfer of business assets.

The Court of Justice has been alluding to 'abuse and abusive practices' for more than thirty years, but for a long time the significance of these references has been unclear. Few lawyers examined the case law, and those who did doubted whether it had led to the development of a legal principle. Within the last few years there has been a radical change of attitude, largely due to the development by the Court of an abuse test and its application within the field of taxation. In this book, academics and practitioners from all over Europe discuss the development of the Court's approach to abuse of law across the whole spectrum of European Union law, analysing the case-law from the 1970s to the present day and exploring the consequences of the introduction of the newly designated 'principle of prohibition of abuse of law' for the development of the laws of the EU and those of the Member States.

This successful textbook remains the only offering for students of European company law, and has been fully updated.

European citizenship is facing numerous challenges, including fundamental rights and social justice considerations. These get amplified in the context of Brexit and the general rise of populism in Europe today. This book takes a representative selection of these challenges, which raise a multitude of highly complex issues, as an invitation to provide a critical appraisal of the current state of the EU legal framework surrounding EU citizenship. The contributions are grouped in four parts, dealing with constitutional developments posing challenges to EU citizenship; the limits of the free movement paradigm in the context of EU citizenship; EU citizenship beyond free movement; and, lastly, EU citizenship in the context of the outside world, including Brexit, the EEA and Eurasian Economic Union.