Economic and political considerations in the Court’s case law post crisis: An example from tax law and the internal market

This paper investigates whether the ‘Euro crisis’ has altered the Court of Justice’s legal reasoning in the area of the four freedoms and direct taxation. In view of the tremendous budgetary implications of the Court’s judgments in the area of direct taxation, this paper departs from the hypothesis that the financial crisis could result in the adoption of a more ‘lenient’ approach by the Court towards the Member States’ national budgets (in particular those under financial assistance). By deploying three different indicators, the interpretation and use of the general principles of EU law, the limitation of the temporal effects of the judgment, and the number of references for preliminary rulings, this paper concludes that the Court has not been as affected by the financial crisis as initially suspected.