A Belgian court has requested a preliminary ruling from the European Court of Justice with respect to whether certain fundamental EU rights are infringed by a provision of DAC 6, which requires mandatory automatic exchange of information in the field of taxation in relation to reportable cross-border arrangements.
Specifically, the court asks whether the provision infringes the rights to a fair trial and respect for private life under the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.
The DAC 6 provision in question relates to situations where an EU member state takes the necessary measures to give intermediaries the right to waiver from filing information on a reportable cross-border arrangement where the reporting obligation would breach legal professional privilege under the state’s national law. In such circumstances, the state must require the intermediaries to notify any other intermediary or, if there is no such intermediary, the relevant taxpayer, of their reporting obligations.
The ruling request asks whether required notification infringes the aforementioned rights to the extent that it requires a lawyer acting as an intermediary to share with another intermediary that is not his or her client, even in the absence of pending legal proceedings, information that the lawyer obtained in the course of representing clients in legal proceedings and/or giving legal advice.
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