Trusts and the freedom of establishment. Implications of the Panayi Trust case and additional reflections on the importance of language: the example of ‘trust insolvency’, a ‘hybrid mismatch’?

Abstract

On 14 September 2017, the European Court of Justice ruled on the Panayi Trust case (Case C-646/15). In this article, we focus on some of the key issues presented by this case, such as the question of whether trusts can be regarded as ‘entities’ which can fall under the personal scope of the freedom of establishment. The article concludes by making some additional reflections on the disparities between the different language versions of the Panayi Trust judgment.