An EU court has ruled that a Belgian fiscal scheme which exempts multinational companies from paying taxes on "excess" profits is illegal.
In a press release published on Wednesday, the Luxembourg-based General Court – the second-highest judicial body in the EU – stated that the scheme "infringes EU state aid rules" by "differentiating between operators who were in a comparable factual and legal situation".
In particular, the Court noted that the system was unlawfully "selective" insofar as "it was not open to companies that had decided not to make investments, centralise activities or create employment in Belgium".
More than 50 companies are reported to have earned a total of €700 million from the nearly two-decade-old scheme, including German chemical manufacturer BASF, British oil and gas company BP, and Belgian telecommunications provider Proximus.
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The General Court's decision marks the latest twist in a long-running legal saga. In 2019, the same body had annulled the Commission's verdict three years earlier that the scheme violated the bloc's internal market rules by constituting an illicit form of state aid.
Following an appeal, the European Court of Justice – the EU's highest judicial body – ruled in 2021 that the Commission's original decision was valid and referred the case back down to the General Court.
Belgium still retains the right to appeal the decision to the European Court of Justice.
