EU’s hypocritical Margrethe Vestager going after Apple while backing Madeira tax avoidance scheme
“This morning I heard an interesting radio report on the European Commission’s long-standing, practically unconditional support of one of Europe’s worst tax avoidance schemes,” Florian Mueller writes for FOSS Patents.
“In light of the Ireland-Apple ‘state aid’ case, it would be bad enough if this merely involved the European Commission as an institution. Large organizations rarely manage to be consistent,” Mueller writes. “But this is a lot worse: the very same commissioner who wants Apple to pay approximately 13 billion euros in additional taxes, Danish socialist-populist Margrethe Vestager, [who] has given her blessings to the extension of the infamous Madeira tax avoidance scheme until 2027.”
“The aforementioned radio report quotes her spokesman, Ricardo Cardoso, as saying that ‘the free trade zone is a job engine for the Madeira region and the Commission is presently not aware of any indication that the related structure is not compliant with [EU state aid] rules.’ That statement is absolutely ridiculous,” Mueller writes. “…The EU has gone from merely failing to have a positive impact on European innovation to causing serious damage, such as by creating legal uncertainty that threatens to dissuade more and more companies from investing here.”
Now, to be fair, this is only because poor Margrethe is an idiot politician. Go back to Denmark, honey, you’re in over your head – unless your agenda is to destroy the EU from the inside out, in which case: Carry on, you’re doing a hell of a job! — MacDailyNews, September 2, 2016
Anyone who decides to set up a business in a European Union member country today is insane. — MacDailyNews, August 30, 2016
