The Irish authorities have failed to meet the deadline laid down by the European Commission at the end of December to recover €13 billion in tax owed by the American giant Apple.
At the end of August, the European Commission concluded that through an Irish tax ruling, Apple had benefited since 1991 from an undue advantage over its competitors in breach of the EU rules on State aid (see EUROPE 11612).
"The recovery [of the money] has not been done yet, and the Irish authorities are moving forward to collect it", the Commissioner for Competition, Margrethe Vestager, said from Dublin, where she discussed the matter with members of the Irish parliament. "It's tricky to do because it is such a large sum", she acknowledged. Ireland had four months to recover the money, starting from the date of the decision. The Irish authorities and the Commission are still at work calculating the exact sum to be recovered.
John McGuinness, the chair of the parliamentary committee of the Irish parliament that met Vestager, stressed that Apple employed "thousands of people in Ireland and this ruling could have far-reaching implications for multinationals in this country". (Original version in French by Élodie Lamer)