Advice
Our advice is intended to combine tax optimisation with legal certainty. To meet your specific needs, we design custom-made solutions and help you implement them in the various fields of personal and corporate taxation. In particular, we have developed an expertise in the following areas :
- patrimonial taxation,
- financial taxation,
- indirect taxation,
- european and international taxation.
We also support our clients in their relations with the tax administration, for example in a request for a tax ruling.
Litigation
We assist our clients in the context of tax audits and litigations before the administrative or judicial courts.
During a tax audit, we help you develop a defence strategy, take part in the meetings with the auditors and prepare your observations in response to the correction proposal. We also support you during appeals to higher authorities as well as before the competent committees.
To obtain the discharge of the additional taxes collected following an audit (defensive litigation), we identify the grounds to question the legality of the tax procedure and the validity of the taxation. On this basis, we file an initial claim with the tax authorities, then bring the matter before the courts and follow the proceedings.
In the specific case of a request for a refund after spontaneous payment of the tax (offensive litigation), we examine the taxes likely to be refunded, help you file an initial claim and, if necessary, proceed with litigation.
We also handle, for both lawyers and litigants, priority questions of constitutionality brought before the French Constitutional Council and questions referred to the European Court of Justice for a preliminary ruling.
Lastly, we deal with recovery litigation.
We advise and represent both public authorities and private companies in the different fields of public contracts law.
Advice
We assist public authorities and private operators in the preparation, negotiation, award, performance, amendment and termination of public contracts, including:
- public service delegation agreements,
- public procurement,
- agreements for the occupancy of public property,
- complex contractual agreements.
Litigation
In litigations relating to the award or performance of a public contract, we assist the parties to the contract, ousted competitors and other third parties likely to be harmed. We represent them before the administrative (and, when required, judicial) courts in the context of :
- urgent procedures (pre-contractual and contractual urgent applications, urgent applications for the allocation of a provision, etc.),
- proceedings on the substance (appeals challenging the validity of the contract, claims for compensation, etc.).
Before or during litigation, we pursue an amicable settlement of the disputes when it is in the interest of our clients.
We advise and represent French and international companies in all areas of French and European competition law.
Merger control
We support our clients both in the merger notification to the French Competition Authority or the European Commission and the merger review procedure of these operations by the same authorities.
In proceedings against decisions issued by these authorities before the French or European courts, we act on behalf of the parties to the merger or interested third parties.
Anticompetitive agreements and abuses of a dominant position
To prevent anticompetitive practices and develop a risk management strategy, we help our clients implement antitrust compliance programmes.
Moreover, we assist them in contentious proceedings related to anticompetitive practices (agreements and abuses of a dominant position) before the competition authorities as well as the French and European courts. To speed up the resolution of these disputes, we also advise them in the negotiated procedures before the competition authorities (leniency, commitments, settlement).
State aids
We verify the legality of the aids from which our clients or their competitors have benefited or could benefit. We also help them lodge complaints against illegal aids. In the course of the State aid review procedure, we assist them in submitting their comments to the European Commission on the existence and compatibility of such aid.
Furthermore, we represent our clients in proceedings:
- before the European courts (the General Court and the Court of Justice) against decisions of the European Commission (decision not to initiate the formal investigation procedure, positive, negative or conditional decision taken at the end of this procedure, etc.),
- before the national courts against illegal aids.
We also handle proceedings in relation to the recovery of State aids.