CJEU – Recent Developments in Direct Taxation 2015

I. S. 74Introduction

Two direct taxation cases from Greece have been referred to the CJEU in the year 2015. Both of them concern inheritance taxation and both of them are infringement procedures initiated by the Commission within the framework of Article 258 of the TFEU against the Hellenic Republic. They have both already been referred to the European Court of Justice, but it seems that only one of them currently has a case number (C-244/15), the other one can still be referred to only by its press release number.

It has to be underlined, as a preliminary remark, that no request for a preliminary ruling has been filed by any Greek Court on direct taxation issues for an extremely long period of time. After some initial requests for preliminary rulings, which led to the judgments Royal Bank of Scotland,Henkel Hellas and Athinaiki Zythopoiia, and which were submitted by the end of the 1990’s, the Greek Administrative Courts do not seem to have sought a preliminary ruling in the field of direct taxation ever since.

This reluctance of the Greek tax courts is obviously not due to the fact that there are no longer any critical EU law issues to be found in Greek law on direct taxation. It is quit...