 Why do we essentially give that importance to the evolution of the Italian case law on the point? Because Italy is one of the few cases where national courts have actually given an answer to the point of the extent of the judges' powers in dealing with state law. And I refer to what Mr. Fiestra has said before concerning the different types of social control. So the object of social control is the point of essentially law and the point of fact. So this is a distinction that we'll see, as we will see later on, will be paramount in the analysis of the national judges. The Supreme Court has dealt with the problem of exo-official controls concerning state aid in Italy. And I must stress that exo-official powers in Italy are really an exception to a more general rule, as I said before. And so the attitude towards the question in the first place was a very conservative attitude. The Italian judges have been very reluctant to extend their exo-official powers, of course, also in light of not only the general rules concerning the management of the trial, but also in light of the questions of constitutional compatibility, so compatibility of exo-official power with the general rights of defense as set out in the Italian constitution. However, the ever-more pressing influence of European Union law has compelled the Supreme Court to question the rigidity of this conservative approach. And as I mentioned before, the most important evolution of the case law has dealt with essentially two fields, two of the main fields of law. On one hand, tax law, and I specifically refer to the case of banking foundations, but I will not dwell on this point because this will be the object of our next case study. And the point of the winding up of an enterprise, and especially the so-called literature on the extraordinary administration, what's here in Italy called grand in present crisis, so large enterprises that enter a period of crisis and they must be warmed up with certain procedures that I will not dwell upon because they take more specific points of our meeting. So the first question that has been put to the attention of the Supreme Court concerns the different degrees of judgment where state aid questions could be raised. Of course, the Supreme Court dealt with cases concerning its powers, the powers of the Supreme Court. So it must consider that the judgment before the Supreme Court is a judgment with a very limited object, at least in Italy. The Supreme Court of Cassation, Court of Cassazione, cannot reexamine factual evidence, cannot stand in the case from a factual point of view, but it is called to rule only on mistakes in law or other specific errors, mistakes that have been committed by the judges of the previous degrees. So it was relatively easy for the Supreme Court to state at an earlier time that the Supreme Court, Court of Cassazione, could not be called to express its views to judge a question of state aid if that question had not been previously raised in the previous degrees. Of course, one cannot in Italy, but I imagine also in other countries, cannot introduce a certain specific point of fact or law for the first time before the Supreme Court. So the first position of the Supreme Court was not only excluded the possibility of sufficient controls by the Supreme Court on the point of state aid, but also excluded that the parties could for the first time introduce the question before the Supreme Court. And I refer to my 10th slide, what I call the Supreme Court Step 1. The next step was to focus entirely on the point of ex officio powers of judges. The Supreme Court allowed four parties to bring before the Supreme Court the question of compatibility of a certain national provision, a certain national measure with new law, and specifically with specific regard to state aid law. So the parties were allowed to bring before the Supreme Court the question for the first time during the entire trial. But on the other hand, the Supreme Court excluded that it was amongst its powers to act ex officio. So I included in the slides some examples of the Supreme Court judgment where the question was specifically dealt with. The first judgment that I put in this slide concerned the litigation on large enterprises entering crisis. It said that the objection with which a party states that a state provision is in breach of new law concerning state aid law is an objection in the substantial sense, since it aims at demonstrating the lack of the conditions for the demand to be granted. Therefore, we included that the judge must assert an ex officio, they have the existence of such elements in order to verify whether the provision must be disregarded. So here the Supreme Court, yes, to the Supreme Court was very conservative. It's, in my opinion, it's also disregarded the distinction that we have made before between different types of ex officio controls. So one point is for the Supreme Court to pronounce on the interpretation of the law. On one another point is to examine ex officio sexual elements, elements that constitute only facts. This judgment sort of takes for granted that an examination of this sort concerning state aid is a factual examination. So this regards the fact that there is also, of course, an interpretation of the specific law that must be conducted. This is a point that will be then corrected by further judgment of the court. In the next slide, I put another example of what I call the step one of the evolution of the case law on the point. So always concerning the point of the law, the crisis entering crisis, if here the court, again, takes for granted that a certain kind of analysis on the point of compatibility of a national measure with European Union law always implies an ascertaining, in concrete terms, of a different treatment being put in place. So in my opinion, this is a point of view that is, of course, very conservative. And again, it starts from an assumption that is not actually right. There are cases where there are no necessities of a certain effect of this ammunition to understand whether or not a certain measure constitutes a state. Then this is something that has been then dealt with in the second step of the evolution of the Supreme Court case law. What is interesting in my opinion is also that, as you can see from the dates of the judgment that I put in this slide, that there are in the same year and also concerning the same question, very different positions taken by the judges with a few months of difference of them, which gives the exact measures of how much the question has been and the attention of the Italian judges and also the Italian scholars for the debate was very, very heightened. So step two of the Supreme Court, the first steps have been more careful. There will even be more open attitude towards the question. But it was explained not much as the duty of the national judge to directly apply the European Union law, but as an interpretation of the procedural rules. So this case that you can find in my 12th slide, the 2004 case, it concerned an interpretation of the rule concerning the appeal. So what must be the object of an appeal? And this here for the first time concerning state case was assertion that the analysis of the compatibility of domestic law with the community law is not conditioned upon the introduction of a specific question or demand since the point and be known by the judge also as a feature. Then, and I come to my 13th slide, again, the debate was so heightened that it was a high degree of attention on the point that the Supreme Court itself understood that there was the need to invest an even higher authority on the point. So it referred the question to the so-called session unit and joint sections of the Supreme Court. Briefly said, the most relevant questions are before the joint sections of the Supreme Court. And all there is a debate within the Supreme Court itself. The single sections of the Supreme Court can refer the question to the joint sections. So the joint sections were referred to the question of exo-feature controls in the field of state aid. And in 2006, they clarified that the exam of the implementation of state aid measures must be conducted also as a feature by national judges, even if a specific objection or request on the point has not been raised by the parties. And this judgment has been groundbreaking for Italian case law. And there was this point as being made by the Supreme Court, by the joint sections of the Supreme Court, by applying sort of analogic interpretation with reference to other similar cases, such as the case of the use of supervenants, so the case of a certification in the law during the trial, or questions of constitutional compatibility that afterwit a certain rule, a certain provision has been because it's incompatible with the contribution. So this has been the main point, the starting point of an evolution that has, in 2007, for the first time, led to the recognition of different types of exo-feature controls. So here in Italy now, case law has been quite constant in the latest year to divide the question of the types of exo-feature controls in two categories. So type one, exo-feature analysis of judges on point of law, and exo-feature control of judges on point of fact. I mentioned in the slide that the 2007 ruling of the Supreme Court, according to which the issue of the compatibility of a national provision with new law can be raised exo-feature by the judges on the grounds of the principle that I mentioned before, you are in Victoria, as it happens in the case of your super-variance. However, there is a distinction. So for now, the judgment of the joint sections of the Supreme Court was the first step toward the formulation of a distinction, depending on the issue requiring sexual scrutiny. So whether or not the issue before the Supreme Court or before the Supreme Court requires a further examination of factual elements. So if the unlawfulness of the entire discipline or one or more of its rules in questions, and when, of course, it is then clear that the entire regime, provisions at issue constitute by themselves. So without the need of a further factual analysis as stated, then the court can intervene exo-feature and pronounce on its compatibility, not much but on the need of further examination on the point of state aid. On the contrary, if the unlawfulness of the discipline comes into question in relation to its specific implementation, and so whether or not the subject in question enjoys a higher benefit than those granted to other of its competitors because of a state aid, the judge cannot examine the question if the parties do not specify and demonstrate the relevant facts. The judgment that I quoted does not specify this point, but, of course, this means that there are obstacles to the possibility for a court to present those relevant facts, which means that if the judge does not have all of its elements right in front of him, and according to the procedural rules of the Italian Civil Procedural Court that there is no more time to present those facts, then exo-feature control is impeded, is out of the question, cannot be upheld. This, of course, raises the other question of restubicata that I will not dwell upon because it was already mentioned by Mr. Fiestra. I have to say that this is now the case law on the point, and there are things, as you can see, in my last slide, number 15, that you can see that the position held by the Supreme Court in 1907 was then upheld even more recently, including the Supreme Court in 1916. There are not many cases, many more recent cases on the point of state aid. So the latest last case that concerned the point of exo-feature control was that with in 2016, and it confirmed that the distinction between exo-feature controls concerning factual elements and exo-feature controls concerning provisions that constitute exe by themselves state aid without the need of a more specific examination on the factual elements of the case by the court. So the case study that I thought would be interesting to examine the concerned banking foundations. For those of you, of course, who are not from Italy, I will briefly introduce the issue. Banking foundations were introduced with an Italian law, with an Italian foreign law of 1919, that separated the bank as an enterprise and the ownership of the bank. So the bank as an enterprise was given, so to speak, to corporations, and its ownership and the shares of that corporation were given to an entity, a new entity, called the Banking Foundation. So of course, the corporation, the banking corporation, continued to act as a bank, as an enterprise, and the foundation had certain limits that had been posed to its activity. Those limits will be very relevant in the examination of the solution to the case. So the law especially provided that the foundation could only have the act to attain purposes of the public and social interest, principally in the field of scientific research. Of course, this activity was not excluded by the fact that the foundation had to manage its shares, so the shares in the banking enterprise, so in the corporation. And initially, the foundation could also acquire shares of other businesses, either in the banking sector or in other banking sectors, in other fields that were not banking. With the only difference that they could not acquire a majority share in other banking corporations, they were under the control of the Ministry of Finance, and then I move on to slide number three of my second group of slides. They were under control of the Ministry of Finance and needed the authorization of the Ministry for operating on their shares of the banking corporation and other banking institutions. This limit was repealed later on, but that will not be as relevant for the solution of the case. Then in 1998, the Amitalial Law modified the limit to the foundation's activity. They could acquire shares in enterprises only in as much as such enterprises were instrumental to their purposes, so in their irrelevant sectors that were connected to their social services. So the contest here is that of an entity which does not have direct entrepreneurial activity and holds shares in another corporation that acts as an enterprise. And this foundation does not operate in a business area, but only manages shares. So moving on to slide 2001, the specific tax provision clarifies that banking foundations are non-profit-making entities operating according to principles of transparency and morality. For tax purposes, banking foundations are considered to be non-commercial entities, even though they pursue their objective through instrumental enterprise. This is what we have said before, a company that has taken care of operating only in fields that are connected to their social purposes. And this is the framework as far as banking foundations are concerned. The legitimate context with regard to taxing is that that you can find in slide number five, which generally, this is not the current regime. Of course, I referred to the previous regime concerning the corporation and the critical persons, which has now been repealed and substituted by the forces that is not relevant for the purposes of the study. And at the time, maybe those distributed by limited identity companies were subject to withholding taxes and advance payments. And maybe those distributed to entities that are not subject to corporation tax were subject to 30% withholding tax. The treatment for foundations are partly referred at the time. So corporation tax was reduced by half for entities of social assistance, foundations, and other nonprofit institutions. And there was an exemption from withholding tax as an advance payment on dividends. So generally, the treatment of those entities was partially different from the treatment of other entities. So moving on to the facts of the case, slide number seven, the banking foundations ask the authority for the exemption from withholding tax on dividends, stemming from their shares in the banking enterprise or in the corporation that I mentioned before. And the application of taxes reduced by half. Tax authority rejected such requests stating that the managing of the shares constituted a commercial activity, escaping the advantage regime. And this request was then denied also in the first degree of judgment. There was a second degree of judgment where the Court of Appeals, so to speak, requested the grant of the request in light of the foundation's purpose of public interest, the level of which the Court of Appeals stated that the banking foundation did not market such as other competitors. So the Ministry of Finance went to the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court was then called upon to render its judgment on the point. It is important to stress, of course, that no mention whatsoever of any question concerning the compatibility of the tax measures with EU law and the political state law was made throughout the entire judgment. So nothing in the file ever mentioned the question of state aid. So now we must understand how the Supreme Court rules on the point. Of course, there are two different aspects of the question, a more procedural aspect of the case which concerns the specific object of our today meeting. So whether or not the Supreme Court and by law examine the question under state aid law, exorbitant, and then the more substantial question of whether or not the measure is issued if applied to banking foundations that could constitute a state aid with all that comes with it in terms of procedural rules. So we should try to apply here, in this case, the principles that I have mentioned before on the distinction between the two types of exo-feature controls. So whether or not an exo-feature control is possible by the Supreme Court and if it is possible, it is possible because of factual elements on the point of law. In general terms, Italian law allows the Supreme Court to examine exo-feature of the question of what ability with state aid law. Staying on the point of procedural law and going back to the distinction that we made before concerning two different types of exo-feature control. In this case, of course, the case was more complicated than that, than how I described, but I willingly simplified the fact of the case in order for you to see the point that I tried to make before concerning the difference between the two types of exo-feature controls between the two types of exo-feature control as being made by the Supreme Court in the 2007 judgment that we talked about before in Italy on the point that certain provisions constitute state aid access. So there is no need to examine the facts from a factual perspective because that provision constitutes state aid in also in, let me say, theoretical terms. So it is enough to just read and understand the provision to see that there is a difference in treatment and that this difference influences in a certain way the functioning of the market. This is the turning point for the Supreme Court so in the point that Supreme Court uses to distinguish between the first type of an exo-feature duty to control and the second type of exo-feature duty to control. The distinction between type one and type two of exo-feature control is a very movable distinction depending on the degree of judicial activism of the judge. In fact, that is precisely correct because the Supreme Court, based only on the fact that I mentioned earlier, decided that it had to refer the question to the Court of Justice. So it referred the question to the Court of Justice and found there to be in abstract a problem of state aid, a problem of measure constituting state aid with the two different sets of problems of procedural nature and substantial nature. This was not a state aid that had been notified to the Commission and then the Supreme Court referred the case to the Court of Justice of the European Union, which rendered its judgment and concentrated on the point of the exo-feature duty and the existence of a state aid in that specific case. The fact that I mentioned to you were actually the only fact that the Supreme Court, the Italian Supreme Court, deemed relevant to render its judgment and to act exo-feature in the case at issue. This goes to demonstrating in my opinion how the distinction between type one and type two of exo-feature controls can be actually kind of moveable and not so determined and not so defined. On the ground of those questions, the Italian Supreme Court actually in 2004 referred the question to the Court of Justice of the European Union, which rendered its judgment in 2006. How in your opinion, the Court of Justice would examine the question. So of course we cannot dwell on the more specific elements of the actual relevance of the case for the internal market. So we do not examine the question from the perspective of the minimis exception or the actual fact that such measure would have on the, on the, on the, on the, on the internal market. So in actual terms, would this measure according to new constitute state aid? So of course we have to examine if the banking foundation in itself can be considered as an enterprise operating on the market. And we come to the analysis of what constitutes its object. Again, the purposes of social public interest and management of its holdings in the banking corporation and possibility of acquisition of shares in other enterprises, banking or no banking. So the Court of Justice has, has to pronounce on the, on this question, how does it rule, how does the Court rule? Is, of course the first question is then is the banking foundation an enterprise? So a subject that comes to relevant from a point of view of U law on state aid. So is it the management of holdings and shares sufficient activity to acquire the nature of an enterprise for purposes of European Union law and state aid law? Basically, the Court of Justice stated that in abstract terms, the management of shares does not preclude the possibility for an enterprise, for an entity to be considered as actually conducting enterprise and it referred to the definition, to the definitions that are relevant in the field of VAT specifically with regard to this case. And so it stated that, in theory, the measure could, fiscal measure granting advantages so relevant such as the reduction by half of the tax debt and the exemption from withholding tax can be in itself considered as state aid being that the banking foundation can be considered as an enterprise operating in the market with and of course then there come all the necessary specification concerning the actual influence on the internal market and the Court of Justice stated that in theory, given the relevance of the banking sector in Italy and throughout the entire internal market, the measure could actually constitute a state aid. So this basically concludes the case study and I think it concludes the morning session if there are no questions from you.