24.11.2007   

EN

Official Journal of the European Union

C 283/18

1.

Inasmuch as the tax benefit arising under the ‘tax integration’ scheme affects the liability to tax of the parent company of the group, which can offset the profits and losses of all the companies of the integrated group, and benefit from the tax neutrality of the internal transactions of that group, does the impossibility — resulting from the scheme laid down under Article 223 A et seq. of the code général des impôts — of including within the membership of a tax-integrated group a sub-subsidiary of the parent company, when it is held through a subsidiary which, being established in another Member State of the European Community and not carrying on business in France, is not subject to French corporation tax and thus cannot itself form part of the group, constitute a restriction on freedom of establishment by reason of the tax consequences arising from the choice of the parent company as to whether to hold a sub-subsidiary through a French subsidiary or, instead, through a subsidiary established in another Member State?

2.

If the answer is in the affirmative, can such a restriction be justified either by the need to maintain the coherence of the ‘tax integration’ system — in particular the arrangements for the tax neutrality of transactions within the group, having regard to the consequences of a system which consists of treating a subsidiary established in another Member State as belonging to the group solely for the purposes of the condition as to the indirect holding of the sub-subsidiary, while remaining automatically excluded from the application of the group scheme since it is not subject to French tax — or by any other overriding reason of public interest?