 Felly, rwy'n gobeithio, rydym yn cael y llyfr o'r cyffredinol gyda'r bwysig. Felly bydd y cyflawn cysylltu, oherwydd oedd rôl i'r llyfr o'r cyffredinol, oherwydd oedd y ddechrau, oherwydd o'r cyffredinol, y ddaf ni wedi bod yn rhaid bod yn rhaid o'r ddweud. ydych chi'n adeiladio y cwmysiwn i ddweud y gweithio i'r defnyddio, i'r defnyddio i'r defnyddio i ddweud y gweithio. Bydd y cwmysiwn i'r defnyddio i ddweud, dwi'n meddwl i'r defnyddio i'r defnyddio i ddweud yr adeiladio i ddweud, a the penalty payment, which was launched by the Commission in Case 40107. The Commission started the proceedings against the Netherlands and a deal was done, and an agreement was reached that the Dutch government would introduce legislation to remedy the defect. Now, we were talking about the role of the Civil Courts just before they made a what's also interesting as a background here, is that when the Commission started demanding of the Dutch Government that they recover this interest, the Dutch Government said, Tell me, well we can't do it through the administrative route, that's not allowed, the Council of State said no, so we have to go the civil route. So we can still try through civil proceedings based on Unjustified Enrichment to get this remaining interest, but it will take years they said, and we can't guarantee success. Felly, mae gennym ni'n gwneud i'r newydd. Felly, mae'n meddwl i'r cyffredinol. Mae'r cyffredinol yn ymddangos i'r gyffredinol, eich bod yn ymddangos i'r cyffredinol, a'r credu sy'n meddwl i'r cyffredinol. Felly, mae'n rhaid i'r cyffredinol i'r arwad y bydd yma, ddifanodd y ffordd o'r ffordd rydyn ni'n gweld i'r gweithio. Rwyf wedi gweithio'r newidau i'w ddechrau yng Nghymru i'r Gweithio, ac mae'r cyffredinol yn ei ddysgu amddangos, sy'n gwybod, sy'n gwybod a'r gwahodd a'r gwahodd i'r gwahodd a'r gwahodd a'r gwahodd i'r gwahodd a'r gwahodd i'r gwahodd i', i'r rhan o'r rhan o'r cyffredinol i'r ddweud o'r ddweud y maen nhw'n gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r ddweud. Yn ymgyrch yn ymbylch, mae'r ddweud yn ddweud y pheriad o'r Llyfrgellau Llyfrgellau Cresgryffydd, Mae'r ddau cyfathpeti o'r Gylaedd, mae'r ddau yn ddau yng nghydillydd fiberaidd, agddsianol iawn yn ddau'i ddau hyffordd ac yn y ddau gyfan ddau dechrau. Ac y llyfrod y cyfaniedig yn ddau yna yn ddau'n gydagos, ac mae'n gyrraedd y clywedol eich ddau cyffredig a oedd y ddau cyfathpeti i'r ddau'r gyffredig, depends on whether you're dealing with tax law, civil law or admin law, and that they range from three to five years generally, and then there are tax. It's generally five years, but there are exceptions where there could be as long as 12 years. Obviously limitation periods apply at different times, you have in some cases you have to start completely action within the limitation period, Sometimes they apply, having taken a decision, you have a number of years to enforce it, so I haven't gone into that here in any detail, this whole issue of limitation periods, something we can talk about, because it's a big issue in Italy as well, but the idea of the legislation as proposed back in 2008 would have been then to just harmonize for recovery at least, the limitation period would be standardised for 10 years, and I presume that the idea was 10 years then from the date of the decision of the commission, because there can always be an argument as to when that period starts to run of course. So there was, when that legislation was first launched, quite a lot of discussion about how appropriate it was, did it go too far, or did it not go far enough, because one of the things that it was linked to was a decision of the commission. So there had to be a decision of the commission, and that would then spark the procedure under this proposed legislation. Now there was a lot of discussion as to what was a decision of the commission, because the legislation proposed that there would be a link between the recovery procedure and a final decision of the commission. Now what is a final decision of the commission, is it one that the commission itself adopts at the end of the formal procedure requiring recovery, or is it one that has been subject then to appeal, or I should say annulment, and then appeal if necessary, and has withstood then any annulment action, or has been amended as a result of an annulment action before the court. So what is final, that wasn't clear. Now from a community point of view, a European point of view, that seemed to be not a very important discussion because the recovery obligation enters into force when the decision is adopted. And the annulment action at the European level has no suspensory effect unless of course there are very special circumstances where you can ask for an injunction. So from a European law point of view, final is not really much of a discussion, but it was a discussion at national level. It would start this machinery and not give the aid beneficiary the opportunity to fully challenge the commission decision. Now I think that that situation could have been resolved because if a national judge was concerned about the legality of the commission decision, they can always refer questions of course to the European Court of Justice. They could under certain circumstances, we can maybe talk about that, suspend the national proceedings. So I think that part of the discussion was a bit of storm in the teeth, as we say in English, but maybe you follow our ideas. There was also some discussion as to whether it was a good idea to amend the General Tax Act and include recovery there. Because the idea had been at least in 2008 in that legislation that you would introduce then a new fiscal measure as the basis for recovery. And there was some discussion amongst tax lawyers at least as to whether or not that was suitable to equate the recovery with a new tax. That was the approach. Anyway, for whatever reason the bill never progressed through Parliament, it was dropped. And in fact in June 2016 a new bill was launched, which in some way is similar to the 2008 proposal, but differs in important respects. It's still a draft. It has been subject to commentary by the Council of State. Our Council of State is divided in two and one division can comment on legislative proposals. And one of the lines of commentary is often at the European angle in any event. And the commentary here, of course, has been published by the Council of State. It's very much based on state aid from a European perspective. I don't know if you have the same, does your Council of State also give commentary advice? Indeed, in 2016 the bill was launched then it goes to our Council of State. The Council of State was quite critical of it. But although it's not binding what the Council of State said, the government takes it into account and they have to reply to those criticisms and explain whether or not they think they are of value and whether they're going to modify the legislation or not. And that is all publicly available information. So indeed, we have a new version before Parliament at the moment as we don't have a government, things are a bit slow at the moment. When I left yesterday, there was still no government. There was still no government. We're waiting for that. We're trying to beat the Belgian record. I think we're nearly there. So things are all a bit slow. So indeed, the idea is now to have a uniform procedure for all cases. And it doesn't matter what the origin of the illegal state is, whether it's private or public or whether it's a result of tax measures that can all qualify for recovery, albeit that there has to come to different procedures. But what is important and what has been a point of discussion is that these procedures are only applicable when the European Commission orders recovery. So not when a national court orders recovery. The Council of State was critical on that point. They said, well, why treat them differently? They're equally important. And therefore, if a national court is ruled on recovery, then this procedure should apply. And the government replied to that by saying, let's wait and see. They said, well, recovery is very complex. The question of whether there should be recovery ordered is complex, how to calculate. In a commission decision, it might be clearer. That's what they think. That's not necessarily the case, as I explained at the beginning. We'll hear more about. But what they said was, look, what the government's point of view is that if a national court is ordering recovery of aid, it is using EU principles. So on the basis of the direct applicability of the state aid rules, the principle of law of cooperation, there should be no issue about recovery anyway. Plus, now we have the new legislation. So we have another argument, and that is the principle of equivalence. So according to EU law, national procedural law is autonomous, but you have to conform to the principle of effectiveness and equivalence. So if you have a procedure in national law, you have to make it available also for EU law remedies. So the government thought that there was no reason to have an explicit inclusion for national court rulings. Now, maybe that's something we can come back to in the discussion, compare that with your time situation, whether that is a good way or not for going forward. So who has to determine the recovery? The reason I put that there was going back to the study. I'll just skip back there. The commission did a study in 2006 as to enforcement of the state aid rules at national level, which our law firm was partly involved in. One of the things that transpired from the study was that it was not always clear which body had to reclaim the aid. It was also not also clear who had to pay the aid, apart from the procedural question. So the legislation proposes then that the body that granted the aid will be the one that has to determine how much has to be refunded, and that this will include then the famous interest. So that issue will be finally resolved. So, as we'll hear, I mean, I think when we look at the media set case, it's not always so easy to calculate. Okay, so then we get to the tax. So in the original proposal from 2016, tax was not going to be covered. That again was subject to a lot of criticism from the Council of State. Now, at the time when the proposal was introduced, as far as I could see what the government was saying was, we're going to deal with tax separately, and we'll come with a new proposal on recovery of tax in a separate measure. But then, as a result of the criticism of the Council of State, and perhaps for other reasons, they decided then to combine then in the final procedure, then provision that allows then state aid in the form of a tax to be recovered through the tax system. That's tax payable. So the separation anyway that we have in the proposed law, as it now stands, is that if the aid has been paid through tax, it will be recovered as tax, and that if tax authorities then will have to come up with new tax measures, like I think in Dutch tax law, you can anyway make a new assessment if there is a new fact. And it's based on that assumption that state aid recovery decision from the Commission is a new fact, and therefore you can make as a tax inspector a supplementary assessment, or a so-called law settlement decision, and that would be the way to effect recovery. Great discussion though about how you deal with all these problems. If you have to reassess everything, how far do you go? I mean, if you pay more tax and you're income then, your profit is lower, does that mean you could have qualified for all sorts of other allowances? So how far does the adjustment and amendment have to go? That I think is purely a question of national law. There's no European law guidance there, as far as I'm aware. That's a question of national law, but maybe that's also something that's worth talking about, because the idea behind recovery, of course, is to restore the status quo ex-ante, as if the advantage had never been given. But it seems to me that the other side of the coin then is if you take away everything that was considered an advantage, you would still have to restore the things you would have been entitled to, but for the advantage. But this opens up a huge area of discussion, because you can't give... I mean, one of the big issues with tax rulings at the moment is, suppose, and many of them are thinking about it, suppose these multinationals sued the governments, because the government issued the ruling, it was the government that didn't notify, it was the government that said, yeah, this is all okay, so the government gets a windfall, and so there is some discussion as to whether or not this will go to arbitration under bilateral taxation treaties. And then the question arises, suppose an arbitration tribunal awards damages, is that then stated through the back door? Now, do we have a big case going on, maybe you've heard about it, make you laugh? As far as I know, one of the companies that are now ruling a fair, a fierce crisis, part of the government that should be ordered to cover the tax worker because the company of the group that in light of the season benefited from the aid that was made in the tax worker, but as you said, in case this season is correct, and so the tax worker has to recover this, this will detail the other company saying that the group without the company paid more taxes. And so, this is sort of a trust price that we're waiting for, and so, as far as I know, Fiat Chrysler Italian launched an action for refund, to get refund, in case the ECJ will state that the season is correct, you have to pay more taxes in anilaxiwyr. The Italian, the entire group and the Italian company has already launched an action for the Italian authority. Please, refund me the overpay, all the tax that the tax worker and the aid that you got. You really need a trust price in this, or to pay less, to pay more, to pay less. For the people in each constituency, the same income costs. I think here, I just want to say that situation is not clarified in the new proposals, and I think nobody would expect it to be clarified yet. I mean, it's such a new situation, I don't think you would deal with it in legislation. But I mean, we will have, I suppose, from a tax point of view, we will have measures coming from the EU that will help clarify this in the future. Not so much for recovery, but on group taxation generally, I suppose. So, for the future, it might become clearer, but for the past... You're right. It is some clear situation for future. But in this case, if it could be easier to get involved, because we have a decision of the European Commission that ordered the maximum to the forward. So, we have a formal decision, not from the European Commission, that ordered the maximum to the forward. So I have to... I have to pay the government, pay the revenue, and I have to... I have to find the group... ..the entire group of... ..the companies. The advantage is that this situation is present in the EU with the foreign company orders. The theory outside the EU... ..the problems in the EU. No, I mean, I think with the big tax ruling cases, all these problems now come up. How do you indeed deal with the knock-on effect? I think that that's one important issue. The other is, to what extent, in Italy should then... I mean, one of the arguments could be that Italy should go to Luxembourg and recover the money from Luxembourg and then pay it to the EU. But we don't have any precedence where a Member State has gone and pursued another Member State. That's not happened. The only famous case where one government has gone to another government to seek recovery is the Ryanair case where the Belgian, the Wallunion government, started proceedings in Ireland to recover aid that Ryanair had received. But they were dropped, those proceedings. So we still don't know to what extent one court would honour a claim by another Member State against its authorities. That's all new in its own new areas. So these are... There's nothing in the legislation and the Dutch government isn't going to take a position on that yet because it's not clear that the EU law compels in the current time and its current state that it has to make any kind of adjustments. So I think everybody's waiting for these things to be fought out through the courts. But I mean, we've seen after Apple, the Apple ruling, or even before its final ruling that the Irish Tax Authority started sending out to lots of companies requests for information about where they were paying taxes and how much they've paid. So you saw that they were already, I think, looking at whether they missed tax and how they were going to claim it in the future. So it will involve, I think, a lot of litigation in these tax rulings. But on the arbitration point, in the sense that by granting the tax ruling you encourage some investor protection position I mean, that will also be an important area. Because suppose then, just suppose that Starbucks was to sue the Dutch government and get some of the money back, is that then state aid? And that, of course, if you're awarded damages, is that going to be considered state aid? And we have a case before the general court called Mikura, which involves an arbitration settlement, not tax case. It was a case about regional subsidies in Romania. Those subsidies were withdrawn by the Romanian government shortly after Romania became a member state. The arbitration tribunal ruled that that had all been done wrongly and that the Romanian state owned Mikura, Mikura, two Swedish brothers. Mikura then was entitled to compensation. Now the commission went totally ballistic and brought an action against the Romanian court that enforced the arbitration award. So what's interesting there is that you see that national judicial authority can grant state aid. So for you, as judges, if you grant damages you're a source of state aid. Which is something to remember. There's also been a recent Greek case where a Greek tribunal, the Greek court threw out a tariff adjustment in the electricity sector, which the commission had required a tariff adjustment. And the Greek court said that this adjustment is not conformity with Greek law so it's not being done properly. Therefore it was illegal so the tariff reverts back to the high tariff, which the commission said was a state aid. And the European court said that Greek court should have notified that for state aid clearance. It's completely ridiculous, but that is taking the idea that a court is capable of conformity with state aid. So in the mix in the case that the commission issued an injunction to stop the National Court of Romania enforcing the award. And what we're now seeing is the commission running around the world also stopping that award being enforced anywhere as you mentioned. It's one thing when things are between member states, but when you have other jurisdictions so make sure you're trying to free Romania's assets in the states and the commission intervened in those cases in the states trying to stop that happening that was thrown out by the Welsh courts. The commission had no standing. But you see the international dimension really increasing now of state aid enforcement. In Belgium make it a try to see the assets of the remaining government in Belgium. But the Belgian Court of Appeal has rejected that on the grounds that this would be state aid. And pending so they've suspended the procedures before the Court of Appeal pending the outcome of the court ruling. And a similar case brought in the UK High Court and the UK High Court has also said we're not going to freeze the assets until we know what the court will do in Luxembourg. And this is all on the basis of the duty of loyalty between 19 courts and the European Court. So you can see that that's really important. Another case I find really interesting is an Italian case called Simet. Which is also about compensation in damages being state aid. And that's part of that has not been settled. But that was also a case where Oval compensation. Oval compensation. So where your council of states said in fact this Simet bus company should have had compensation for running regional bus services. And there before the government paid compensation they asked the commission for pay rates. Of course the commission said it was over compensation and that was state aid. And that was back to the European courts and the European courts said that paying that compensation is a form of state aid. So for the tax ruling cases that's also quite important really from the European courts that you can't pay the state aid. You know they see that kind of compensation in damages as state aid through the back door. So if the administration is being careless it's not very easy to get redress for recovery. It's the beneficiary that has to pay up and the role of legitimate expectations that we've touched on and we maybe look back at that later on.