87The same applies to the national provisions in force after the legislative amendments introduced in 1995 and 1998. It is a matter of agreement that, under those provisions, it is only interest which exceeds what would be paid on an arms-length basis that falls to be re-characterised as a distribution. Whilst, at first sight, the criteria laid down by those provisions appear to require a consideration of objective and verifiable elements in order to determine whether a purely artificial arrangement, entered into for tax reasons alone, is involved, it is for the national court to determine whether those provisions allow taxpayers, where the transaction does not satisfy the arms-length criterion, to produce evidence of the commercial justifications for that transaction, under the conditions referred to in the preceding paragraph.
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