In order to allow the administration to check that this principle is fulfilled, companies have to provide all necessary information on their commercial transactions with affiliates belonging to the same group.

Agenția Națională de Administrare Fiscală (National Agency of Administration).’.

In case of aid, the EFTA State must only provide a list of those beneficiaries who have received an annual tax relief in excess of EUR 200000.

At that stage, there seemed to be no provisions under the State aid rules which would enable Member States to grant aid of that nature.

Accordingly, the Commission concludes that the beneficiaries of the contested measure had a legitimate expectation that the aid would not be recovered and hence it is not requiring recovery of the aid granted to those beneficiaries in the context of any shareholdings held by a Spanish acquiring company, directly or indirectly in a foreign company before the date of publication [121] in the Official Journal of the European Union of the Commission Decision to initiate the formal investigation procedure under Article 88(2) of the Treaty, which could have then benefited from the measure at issue.

As regards the specific reporting requirements for aid and clusters, please see Section 9.1.1 (3rd and 4th paragraph) of the R & D & I Guidelines.

As regards the specific reporting requirements for aid and clusters, please see Section 10.1.1 (third and fourth paragraphs) of the R&D&I Framework.

complete legislative alignment with EU State aid rules in the area of aid and align all other remaining aid schemes identified in the State aid inventory as being incompatible with EU rules. Adopt the regional aid map,

The Commission considered, however, that in the light of its past practice regarding certain aid schemes [12], recovery should only concern the taxes paid in defect of what a beneficiary of the scheme would have paid had the beneficiary applied other tax schemes available at that time, provided this did not lead to reconstruct merely hypothetical choices which could have been made by the beneficiary concerned [13].

Nevertheless, the Commission considers that in the light of the past practice regarding certain aid schemes [28], recovery shall only concern the taxes paid in defect of what a beneficiary of the scheme would have paid had the beneficiary applied other tax schemes available at that time.

On the basis of evaluation studies [34] provided by EFTA States in the notification, the Authority will consider that R&D&I aid schemes have an incentive effect by stimulating higher R&D&I spending by undertakings.

As regards the comments from the competitor, the Commission points out that, with the exception of aid schemes where aid is granted automatically to qualifying expenditure without any discretion on the part of the authorities, there is no obligation for the Member State to make aid available to all operators in the sector on equal terms, including for aid granted under approved or existing aid schemes.

Unlike certain recent complex aid cases, the objectives of the tax system in question are straightforward.

Unlike many recent complex aid cases, the objectives of the measure in question were straightforward.

For this criterion, see e.g. Commission Decision 96/369/EC concerning aid given to German airlines in the form of a depreciation facility (OJ L 146, 20.6.1996, p. 42).

aid, being operating aid, is not as such referable to any activity of the firm in particular.

Tiscalinet also points out that the strategy introduced by France Télécom, notably as regards the launch of the simplified mixed public purchase and exchange offer concerning Wanadoo's shares of 11 March 2004, had the effect of enabling France Télécom to benefit from aid which it would not have received without the State's support measures.

Neither the Authority nor the Commission has taken such action, and indeed the decisions of the Authority in disallowing aid measures in Finland and Norway shortly before the implementation of the Liechtenstein Tax Act should have made it clear that tax measures favouring certain companies or groups of companies should be notified to the Authority [50].Finally, the Authority does not accept that any arguments relating to legal certainty can be valid in this case given the jurisprudence of the court and the wide ranging applicability of Articles 61 (of the EEA Agreement) and 107 (TFEU).

aid measures should be subject to specific conditions of incentive effect, in view of the fact that they are provided on the basis of different procedures than other categories of aid.

By Royal Decree of 7 May 2003 the Belgian authorities implemented all the provisions of the programme act for the maritime sector (Articles 115 to 127 of the said programme act), specifying in the preamble to the Royal Decree that the decree provided ‘no legal basis to taxpayers for claiming vis-à-vis the tax administration or before the national courts the application of the aid measures whose compatibility is being investigated by the Commission’ in accordance with the Commission's decision of 19 March 2003.