Today, the Court of Justice of the European Union
("CJEU") annulled the decision of the Commission that had
decided that Luxembourg had granted Amazon unlawful State aid of
about EUR 250 million in a tax ruling confirming the arm's
length nature of deductible royalty payments by a Luxembourg
operating company to a tax transparent Luxembourg partnership.
Following Advocate General Kokott's opinion, the CJEU considers
that the Commission had wrongly determined the "reference
system", which is the first step in analysing a national
measure in order to be able to categorise it as State aid. It is
worth noting that the CJEU upheld the judgment of the General Court
which had annulled the decision of the Commission but not on the
same grounds.
