A high court of the European Union ruled two important victories for Brussels by ruling against the Tech giants Apple and Google. The sanctions for both companies together exceed 15 billion euros.
In the case of Google, the company was facing a legal process where it was accused of going against EU antitrust laws in reference to the dominant position of your search engineOn the other hand, Apple was fined for back taxes to Ireland.
The EU sanction against Google
Finally Google lost this Tuesday its last legal resort against a European Union sanction for giving its own shopping recommendations an illegal advantage over rivals in search results. In doing so, the continent has settled one of the major disputes antitrust.
The Court of Justice of the European Union upheld the decision of a lower court and dismissed the company’s appeal. The final sanction will be 2.4 billion euros (US$2.7 billion).
The European Commission is the top antitrust authority in the 27-nation blocIn its original 2017 decision, the Commission accused the tech giant of unfairly steering users to its Google Shopping’s own service to the detriment of its competitors.
Alphabet, Google’s parent company had filed a appeal considering that the Commission was wrong in their analysis. However, today the Court of Justice of the European Union rejected the appeal and confirmed the fine, considering that the American company “abused its dominant position by favouring its own product comparison services.”
Now, Google will also face a new legal challenge next week. This will happen when the highest court in the EU issue a possible fine worth around 1.49 billion euros (US$1.6 billion).
The EU sanction against Apple
On the other hand, the case of Apple is one of the most contentious legal battles between the European Commission and big tech. The investigation dates back to 2016 when the EU’s executive arm alleged that Ireland had allowed the iPhone maker to avoid billions of euros in taxes.
Following this, the European Commission made the corresponding calculations and stated that Dublin allowed Apple to pay a one percent tax rate of its European profits in 2003, which then fell to 0.005 percent in 2014. This is another example of the several investigations carried out in the previous decade on agreements advantageous taxes between large companies and several EU countries.
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Reuters
In detail, the iPhone manufacturer prevailed in the case of Ireland in 2020, when the EU General Court annulled order to pay the taxes owed, a decision to which Brussels appealed. Following this, in November of last year, the legal advisor of the High Court of Justice of the EU recommended that the decision be annulled, arguing that it was riddled with legal errors in the process.
However, the high court, which could have sent the case back to the lower court, ultimately decided to rule that Apple was required to pay back taxes. In this way, the ruling ruled that the total fine will be 13 billion euros.
Source: Ambito
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