EU probes Luxembourg's tax treatment of France's Engie

The European Union's anti-trust watchdog has launched a probe into whether Luxembourg might have broken state aid rules by giving tax breaks to French electricity group GDF Suez, which is now known as Engie.

The European Commission said Luxembourg tax authority rulings appear to treat the same financial transactions between four units of the company in an inconsistent manner.

EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said Monday that these rulings "seem to contradict national taxation rules and allow GDF Suez to pay less tax than other companies."

Luxembourg's finance ministry said it "considers that no special tax treatment or selective advantage" has been awarded to any unit of Engie. It pledged to cooperate with the probe, which it said is not related to any other EU tax investigation in Luxembourg.