Case C-754/26, Ville de Bruxelles – a German Land pays for parking, a Belgian region does not
Discrimination on grounds of nationality is usually pleaded by a person or a company. Here it is pleaded by a German federal state against a Belgian city, over a parking tax.
Facts
The Land Baden-Württemberg is the appellant before the Cour d’appel de Bruxelles against the Ville de Bruxelles. The city levies a tax on parking spaces for budgetary purposes. The Land owns property in Brussels used, as the referring court puts it, for a public service of general interest that is German and European, and the tax is applied to its parking spaces. It is not applied to the parking spaces of property used for a public service of general interest that is Belgian and European, owned by the subdivisions of Belgium itself — its Regions and Communities. The Land says that difference is discrimination on grounds of nationality; the referring court has put two questions, the first on the general principle of non-discrimination and the second on freedom of establishment and free movement of capital.
Questions Referred
1. Does the EU law general principle of non-discrimination, enshrined in the Treaty on European Union (TEU) and in Article 18 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), as well as in Article 21 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, in addition to the provisions of Articles 2 and 12 TEU, preclude a regulation of a (municipal) local authority of the Member State of establishment imposing for budgetary purposes a tax on parking spaces, from applying to the parking spaces of a property used for a – non-Belgian and European – public service of general interest, owned by the subdivisions of another Member State (such as a German Land), when that tax does not apply to the parking spaces of a property used for a – Belgian and European – public service of general interest, owned by the subdivisions (Regions and Communities) of the Member State of establishment?
2. Does the prohibition of discrimination and restrictions on the exercise of freedom of movement and establishment within the EU (Articles 49 and 63 TFEU) preclude different treatment such as that described above?
Sources
OJ notice C/2026/4870 (EUR‑Lex) · Case file on CURIA · Article 18 TFEU
Comment
The tax itself is trivial and the question behind it is not. Article 18 TFEU prohibits, “within the scope of application of the Treaties”, “any discrimination on grounds of nationality”. Every element of that sentence is contested here. A German Land is not a national of anywhere in the ordinary sense; it is part of a Member State. The exemption it wants is not written by reference to nationality at all, but by reference to a closed list of Belgian public bodies — which produces the same result, since no foreign entity can ever be a Belgian Region or Community. And whether a municipal parking tax levied on a building used for a foreign State’s own public service falls “within the scope of application of the Treaties” is the threshold on which the case may turn, because direct taxation is a national competence and Article 18 has effect only where some other connection to Union law exists.
That is why the second question matters more than its brevity suggests. Articles 49 and 63 TFEU supply the connection that Article 18 alone may lack: if the Land is exercising a freedom — owning and using immovable property in another Member State is a movement of capital, and a permanent establishment there engages Article 49 — then a tax that falls only on foreign public owners is a restriction requiring justification. The difficulty is that public authorities acting in the exercise of public powers are not obviously undertakings or economic operators, and the Court’s free movement case law is built around economic activity. A Land maintaining a representation or a cultural institute in Brussels is doing something, but it is not trading.
There is a third possibility that the referring court hints at by citing Articles 2 and 12 TEU: that this is less about free movement than about how Member States treat each other’s public bodies within the Union. Brussels hosts the subdivisions of every Member State — Länder, regions, autonomous communities all keep representations there — and a rule that exempts Belgium’s own federated entities while taxing everyone else’s is, in a city whose entire economy rests on that presence, a policy with a wide field of application. The Court has never had to say whether the principle of non-discrimination reaches a Member State’s treatment of another’s constitutional subdivisions. If it does, a good deal of municipal tax drafting in Brussels will need revisiting.