From Daily Mail to Cartesio – a case for the consistency of the ECJ?[1]

By Kay Kimkana [1] Kay Kimkana has recently completed her LLM at Queen Mary with a Distinction. Prior to that, she worked with the International Bureau of Fiscal Documentation (IBFD) and Deloitte in Kuala Lumpur. She can be contacted at kay.kimkana@gmail.com

1. Introduction

On 16 December 2008, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) delivered its judgment in Cartesio[2] where it ruled that national rules that prevented a company from transferring its seat to another EU member state did not violate the rights under the freedom of establishment set out in arts 43 and 48 of the EC Treaty. The decision was an eagerly awaited one[3], although it did not necessarily conform to popular expectations (including the Advocate General’s Opinion) that the Court would review and perhaps overturn its judgment in Daily Mail.