A European response to “letterbox companies” in social, tax and transport: rules and case

Abstract

This piece of research studies EU response to the practices that pretend, through ficti­tious societies, to elude the norms of access to the market with the objective of obtaining competitive ad­vantages, often called “letterbox companies”. In particular, case-law and regulations on the enforcement of Directive 96/71/EC concerning the posting of workers shall be analyzed under the light of normative proposals of the EU Commission in the framework of the “mobility package”. In short, parameters of effectiveness of such standards shall be established, taking proposals in the road sector as analytical paradigm. Different formulas used by the Community institutions, in social, tax and sectorial areas will be described critically; as well as ECJ rulings that in the last decades have offered interpretative criteria for the identification of such “letterbox companies”.