Ireland has provided Apple with a total of thirteen billion euros in illegal aid for more than two decades. The Court of Justice of the European Union, based in Luxembourg, ruled this morning that this amount of back taxes must still be recovered.
This ends Apple’s resistance to an order from the EU competition authorities to repay this disguised state aid. In 2020, a lower court (the European General Court, the court below the European Court of Justice) had ruled in favor of the American technology company, but the highest European court has now made short work of that.
For European Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, who oversees fair competition, this is a major victory. Her years-long crusade against ‘aggressive tax planning’ has finally succeeded. Vestager was annoyed that Ireland and Luxembourg in particular offered American tech companies considerable tax benefits to attract their European headquarters. Ireland, for example, artificially reduced the tax burden to as much as 0.005 percent in 2014.
Eight years ago, the European Commission decided that Ireland had to recover this unlawful aid for the period 1991 to 2014. Apple opposed this, supported by an army of lawyers. Apple reacted disappointed to the ruling of the highest court, against which there is no appeal.
