On Thursday 19 September, in Strasbourg, MEPs of all political stripes – from left and right groups, pro-European and Europhobic – welcomed the recent judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union upholding the European Commission’s decision to require Ireland to recover €13 billion from Apple, to which it had granted illegal state aid (see EUROPE 13479/1).
Gabriele Bischoff (S&D, German), for example, described the ruling as “historic”, as it will strengthen public confidence in the EU institutions. “Europe is calling time on unfair tax competition”, enthused Stéphanie Yon-Courtin (Renew Europe, French).
Pasquale Tridico (The Left, Italian) advocated a Europe where everyone contributes their fair share to national tax systems. He expressed his “doubts” about granting tax powers to the European Commissioner-designate, Wopke Hoekstra, whose name was mentioned in 2021 in the ‘Pandora Papers’ scandal for investments made in the British Virgin Islands while he was Finance Minister (see EUROPE 12804/2).
On the Europhobic side, Pierre Pimpie (PfE, French) advocated “a doctrine on transfer pricing” at European level. And Zsuzsanna Borvendég (ESN, Hungarian), for whom the ruling demonstrates that it is possible to force the new technology giants to comply with European rules, called for action against Meta, which “limits freedom of expression by deleting patriotic content”. (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)