The Commission has published a study on the implementation of the Merger Directive. The study, carried out by Ernst & Young for the European Commission, provides a comprehensive overview of the implementation of the Tax Merger Directive (Council Directive 90/434/EEC as amended) in the 27 EU Member States.

The purpose of the survey was to enable the Commission to assess the need for further EU-wide action in this area.

The main finding of the survey is that most Member States have correctly transposed the Tax Merger Directive, but it has been under-utilised due to the fact that the corporate law allowing cross border mergers has not been in place in many countries up to recently. According to the Commission website, this may change with the implementation of Directive 2005/56/EC on cross-border mergers of limited liability companies.

The Country specific pages relating to Ireland start on page 715 of the Report.