In May, the EU General Court issued two further judgments in the run of cases on the application of EU state aid law to tax rulings by national authorities. The judgments confirm that, although the state aid rules can apply to rulings involving intra-group transfer payments, the Commission faces a high burden in showing that such rulings involve state aid. On the other hand, they also confirm that EU state aid rules potentially apply to any failure by the tax authorities to challenge complex tax avoidance schemes. Because EU state aid cases can still arise from the UK, UK tax advisers need to pay attention to these cases – and the principles they raise will also potentially carry over into the new UK subsidy regime.

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1. The title of “Injunctions and Trusts” is broad. My plan is (i) to start with some history, (ii) then look at how the injunction jurisdiction can usefully be described today, (iii) then look at Proprietary Claims Constructive trusts and tracing, and (iv) then look at the meaning and effect of the example freezing order and recent judgments which have misunderstood this. (v) Our time is limited and I hope that we shall have some time for questions at the end. I will start with some history.

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This was an appeal to the Commercial Court on questions of law, arising in a London arbitration on cargo claims on bills of lading brought by the consignee and its insurers against the shipowners. The case concerned the counterclaim by the shipowners for costs incurred in Spain by the ship’s managers in successfully defending claims brought against them by cargo insurers in the Spanish court, for which they were not the responsible carrier. The counterclaim was brought by the shipowners for their managers’ own loss.

Please click here to read full article by Steven Gee QC, Christiana Pyrkotou and Aimilia Efstathiou.

In the UK, the ECJ had been called a foreign court in the Brexit debate. However, the term comes from Switzerland. The notion of a foreign court was used to refer to an international court that includes judges from other states. However, this notion is fallacious, argues Carl Baudenbacher (LSE). The decisive factor is whether a court is neutral. If a state belongs to an international organisation, the international court in question is neutral towards that state. This applies to the ICJ, for example, regardless of whether a state provides a judge or not. The ECJ, on the other hand, is not neutral for post-Brexit Britain and for Switzerland; it is the court of the other party and thus not impartial.

Please click here to read the article published by the LSE Blog.

Christopher Vajda QC stepped down from his role as a judge at the European Court of Justice following the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union on 31 January 2020. He returned to Monckton Chambers in October, where he began his legal career. Janith Aranze spoke to Vajda about streamlining the General Court’s procedures, the UK’s approach to digital markets and whether further guidance is needed at an EU-level on competition-related SEP matters.

To read the Q&A please click here.

In Colchester Institute Corporation v HMRC, the Upper Tribunal held that state-funding did have a sufficient link to the provision of education and vocational training provided by a college to constitute supply of services for consideration and economic activity. Nevertheless, HMRC was entitled to set-off input tax to reduce the taxpayer’s repayment claim. The implications of the case are likely to be profound: many businesses – educational and otherwise – supplying services that are funded by state agencies are now likely to argue that their provision of services does, in fact, constitute the supply of services for consideration and economic activity. That being so, there would be no need to account for output tax on those services and any accounted for with HMRC may be recoverable.

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