European Court of Justice Issues Advocate General Opinion on Swedish Risk Tax on Credit Institutions

The European Court of Justice (ECJ) May 21 issued an Advocate General opinion for Case No. C-459/24 P, on Sweden’s risk tax on large credit institutions. The taxpayers, a Swedish banking association and one of its member banks, challenged the European General Court (EGC) judgment that upheld a European Commission (EC) decision finding that the tax didn’t constitute state aid. Upon review, the Advocate General opined that: 1) the EGC misapplied Article 107(1) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) by wrongly defining the tax objective as targeting systemic risk, and by failing to properly assess ...