On November 22, 2012, the ECJ (C-600/10) held that the European Commission had not substantiated that Germany taxes dividends and interests of foreign pension funds in a discriminatory way compared to German pension funds. The judgement was surprising: Whereas in the infringement procedure against Finland the ECJ recently held (8 November 2012, C-342/10) that Finnish pension funds are preferentially taxed compared to foreign funds, the European Commission failed to demonstrate the same in the infringement procedure against Germany. The answer to this result: In the case against Germany, the Commission tried to argue that specific deductions are allowed for German pension funds only. The Commision then failed to prove this. The argument against Finland was rather simple in that the Commission argued in this case that Finnish pension funds paid no tax compared to foreign pension funds which paid taxes on Finnish interest and dividends. This shows that too complex arguments can ruin your case. With a simpler approach like in the Finnish case, we think the Commision would have won the argument of discrimination.