Brussels, 05/07/2016 (Agence Europe) - The European Court of Justice is expected to cancel the decisions by the General Court of the EU involving the Irish tax on airline passengers. On Tuesday 5 July, Advocate General Paolo Mengozzi argued that this was because the European Commission decision ordering Ireland to recuperate €8 from beneficiary airlines per passenger was legitimate.
This effectively constitutes a new development in these joint cases (C-164/15 and C-165/15) involving
Ryanair and Aer Lingus and the air travel tax (ATT). In his conclusions presented to the Court on Tuesday, the Advocate General suggested overturning the General Court's decisions delivered in November 2014, with which the latter criticised the Commission for not having opened formal examination procedures (EUROPE 11204). The Commission complied with this in September 2015 and opened an investigation on the partial exemption of the tax for passengers on connecting or transit flights that certain airlines in Ireland benefitted from under the terms of this tax (EUROPE 11398).
According to the Advocate General, the General Court committed a legal error because the Commission had been right to apply certain standard assessment criteria for aid granted in the form of applying reduced tax rates and making it incumbent on Ireland to recover the difference between the upper and lower rates of the ATT on each ticket issued or the sum of €8. He is therefore proposing to the Court to cancel these judgements and endorse the Commission's initial decision. The Advocate General therefore believes that these joint cases should be sent back to the General Court if the Court is led to believe that it is not able to make a judgement on the overall nature of the cases. (Original version in French by Jan Kordys)