I do not encourage retroactive law changes, but they do happen. Anyway, I think you miss the point (which was not communicated at all). Long term gains are ver

I do not encourage retroactive law changes, but they do happen. Anyway, I think you miss the point (which was not communicated at all). Long term gains are very hard to pick over short term gains, especially if that would incur some short term loss. The free market [long term] goal of EU can be roughly expressed as a fight for competition over monopolies. It may look extremely lucrative to lower taxes for a corporation to pay significant lump of money (create jobs, capital movement, etc) even at low rate, than to let the corporation set its foot at another country. As it was stated in other comments, a multinational naturally attempts to increase profits by any means and incorporating at different location with significant tax discount is one of the ways. Although, globally (or EU wise) this is simply tax discount for a corporation that is already pretty much resembling a monopoly. Think about the EC decision in this light.