BERLIN: The Governments of France and Germany signed an amendment to the France-German treaty dated (the “Treaty”), which will have an impact in the future for certain investments in real estate.
For France, this amendment follows the amendment to France-Luxembourg signed on 5 September 2014 which also impacts foreign investments in French real estate. The same applies for the Germany which also entered into an amended Treaty with Luxembourg on 23. April 2012 applying most of the amendments as from 1 January 2014 or 1 January 2015 (as regards information exchange for interest income).
There are several changes brought to the Treaty on the basis of the OECD model, but as far as real investments are concerned, it introduces a new rule for (i) gains from the sale of shares of an entity (independent from the legal from and seat of the entity (local or abroad) that predominantly holds real estate assets, and (ii) dividend distributions by REIT (SIIC in France) and OPCI.
