In two judgments dated 20 January 2026 (No. CAL-2025-01047) and 6 February 2026 (No. CAL-2025-01046), the Luxembourg Court of Appeal confirmed that the receveur-préposé du bureau de recette des contributions de Luxembourg (the “Receveur”) has standing to petition for the bankruptcy of a Luxembourg company to recover tax debts owed to another EU Member State. The Court overturned two first-instance decisions that had found the claims inadmissible, clarifying the reach of the mutual assistance mechanism under Directive 2010/24/EU. Luxembourg entities exposed to foreign tax claims should treat unpaid foreign EU tax debt as a genuine Luxembourg bankruptcy risk, not only a foreign enforcement matter.
Background and context
In the first case, the Receveur sought the bankruptcy of a Luxembourg société anonyme over EUR 81,238.09 owed to the German tax authorities. In the second, it sought the bankruptcy of a Luxembourg société à responsabilité limitée over EUR 945,175.- owed to the French tax authorities, after a commandement de payer (order for payment) and several sommations à tiers détenteur (third-party debt orders) had failed. Both petitions relied on the law of 21 July 2012 transposing Directive 2010/24/EU, which creates a mutual assistance framework for cross-border recovery of tax claims between EU Member States.
In both cases, the Luxembourg district court (Tribunal d'arrondissement de Luxembourg) had declared the petitions inadmissible by judgments of 31 October 2025, holding that Article 442 of the Code de commerce reserves standing to a "creditor", a status the Receveur lacked since it acted for a foreign tax authority rather than in its own right, and that a bankruptcy petition is not itself a recovery measure. The Receveur appealed both decisions.
The court's reasoning
The Court of Appeal reversed both judgments. It held that "creditor" under Article 442 should not be read strictly: what matters is the petitioner's genuine interest in the action. Under Article 15 of the 2012 transposition law, a foreign tax claim is treated as a Luxembourg claim, so the foreign authority need not assign its claim to the Luxembourg State; it instead obtains recovery assistance through the Receveur.
Domestically, the Receveur alone is responsible under Article 10 of the law of 27 July 1936 for pursuing recovery, and is personally and financially liable under the law of 8 June 1999 for want of diligence. "Recovery" under Article 20(3) of that law covers all operations by which a public accountant collects sums owed to the State, which necessarily includes acting in court, lodging a proof of debt in a bankruptcy, and initiating bankruptcy proceedings. The Court also rejected the view that bankruptcy is merely an insolvency-finding device, describing it instead as a collective procedure for settling creditors' claims.
Finding both petitions admissible and well founded, and the case files complete enough to decide on the merits (Article 597 of the New Code of Civil Procedure), the Court declared both companies bankrupt, the conditions of cessation of payments and impaired creditworthiness under Article 437 of the Code de commerce being satisfied in each case.
Why this matters for clients
These decisions remove a defence argument that debtor companies had used against Luxembourg bankruptcy petitions brought to recover foreign EU tax debts, namely that the Receveur was not the true creditor under the foreign tax claim. Luxembourg entities carrying unresolved foreign tax exposure, including disputed amounts, should note that even claims consisting largely of penalties and late-payment interest did not prevent a bankruptcy order once the formal recovery conditions were met. The Receveur's role is confirmed to extend, under mutual assistance, to enforcing other EU Member States' tax claims with the same tools used for domestic debts, up to a bankruptcy petition.
Share on
