|
On 30 August, the European Commission issued a State aid decision related to the tax treatment of Apple in Ireland. This decision is historic for several reasons.
First, this decision sets a new record for the amount of aid which a beneficiary of State aid (Apple in this case) has been ordered to repay: up to Euro 13 billion, plus additional interest which could amount to several billion euros.
Before the Apple decision, the Commission had never ordered a company to pay such a large amount of money for an infringement of competition law rules (including State aid, abuse of dominance or cartels). By way of comparison, its record fine in cartel enforcement, which came in the recent truck producers’ cartel case, was a cumulative fine of Euro 2.9 billion...
|