Cartesio: Daily Mail still good law!

For company and European lawyers this heading is self-explanatory but for others it may sound quite cryptic: It refers to the important decision by the European Court of Justice in Cartesio which – to the surprise of many observers – just decided that

"Articles 43 EC and 48 EC are to be interpreted as not precluding legislation of a Member State under which a company incorporated under the law of that Member State may not transfer its seat to another Member State whilst retaining its status as a company governed by the law of the Member State of incorporation".

This confirms the 1988 decision in Daily Mail but goes against the trend of a number of more recent ECJ decisions. To be sure, one may argue that the ECJ has not been inconsistent because these other cases concerned different situtations. I have explained this point in a 2007 article (available here), in particular in the following table, in which I have now added Cartesio:
Finally, one should of course note that Cartesio was not actually about a company but a partnership. This was almost completely ignored by the ECJ, but – as explained elsewhere – it is not straight forward of whether the same principles apply to companies and partnerships.