Can the Uncertainty Caused by the Questioning of Tax Measures in Relation to Cooperatives by the ECJ Be Solved?

Different Member States provide for special tax treatment of cooperatives, which in some of them, are constitutionally protected. In some cases, a lower tax burden is granted to cooperatives due to their exceptional contribution to the community. Some of the tax measures applying to cooperatives are technical adjustments, while others are pure tax benefits, the latter seeking the promotion of the cooperative model. Ascertaining in which cases a given legal measure can be considered to be a technical adjustment and can be considered to be fair or when the given measure can be regarded as a State aid is a difficult task, as the ECJ jurisprudence has very often varied its point of view. Throughout this paper, we are going to follow the ECJ jurisprudence on State aid for cooperatives in order to check out if having an Act on Social Economy as the Spanish one may help Social Economy entities in this regard.