Tax rulings and State aid: musings on recovery

This chapter examines the challenges raised by the process of State aid recovery in the recent tax rulings’ cases. After providing some general background, the chapter sets out the approach of the Commission and the General Court in their most recent decisions and judgments. It is shown that both institutions found that ordering recovery was not legally problematic. In this chapter, their reasoning will be dissected and challenged. Moreover, it will be argued that a series of compelling arguments militate against ordering recovery in the tax rulings’ cases involving the application of an EU law-derived arm’s length principle.