EU: Challenge to EU minimum tax directive on standing grounds (CJEU judgment)

The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) on October 30, 2025, held (c‑146/24P) that a taxpayer did not have standing to challenge the EU minimum tax directive (Council Directive (EU) 2022/2523) based on the interaction between the provisions of the directive dealing with the exclusion of income from shipping activities and member states’ tonnage tax regimes authorized under State aid rules.

Article 17 of the EU minimum tax directive includes an exclusion for international shipping income and qualified ancillary international shipping income, provided that the entity demonstrates that the strategic or commercial management of all ships concerned is effectively carried on from within the jurisdiction where it is located. The taxpayer, a Dutch multinational company carrying out geotechnical services and ship management activities subject to corporate income tax in the Netherlands under the Dutch tonnage tax regime, challenged Article 17 of the directive before the General Court arguing that in the absence of transitional of grandfathering rules for benefits granted under existing tonnage tax regimes, the application of the directive will offset the benefits of those regimes and will therefore alter the rights it acquired prior to the adoption of the directive, based on which the taxpayer had made business and investment decisions.

The General Court rejected the taxpayer’s challenge on December 15, 2023, on the grounds that Article 263 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU (TFEU) permits an individual or entity to initiate proceedings against three categories of acts: (1) an act addressed to that person, (2) an act which is of direct and individual concern to that person, or (3) a regulatory act which is of direct concern to that person. The General Court found that the taxpayer was not individually concerned by the EU minimum tax directive, without further need to analyze the direct concern. The taxpayer then appealed the General Court’s ruling to the CJEU.

The CJEU found that the taxpayer did not have standing to challenge the EU minimum tax directive under Article 263 of the TFEU because it had not demonstrated that it was directly or individually concerned by the directive, or that it formed a limited class affected by the directive by which it could have had standing, merely because it benefited from a favorable tax regime (the Dutch tonnage tax scheme) but was subsequently subject to a higher tax rate following the directive’s implementation. Upholding the General Court’s findings, the CJEU emphasized that the mere fact of benefiting from a favorable tax scheme, the scope or effects of which may be affected by the directive, does not constitute an acquired right specific or exclusive to the taxpayer or to a limited class of persons.

Read a November 2025 report prepared by the KPMG’s EU Tax Centre