European Commissioner defends Apple decision

A member of the European Commission is defending the group’s recent ruling that Apple must pay $14.5 billion in owed taxes, as well as the commission’s antirust investigations of other U.S. multinationals.
 
In an interview with Recode released on Tuesday, Margrethe Vestager noted that while she thought “it’s a completely good thing to want to do business, to want to make money and be a success in the marketplace, to get the attention of customers,” companies such as Google and Apple still need to have limits.
 
{mosads}”I’m not in the business of pointing fingers or blaming companies, but there is a limit to everything,” Vestager, Europe’s commissioner for competition, said. “In Europe, we would congratulate anyone who is successful. But congratulations stop if we find that you start to misuse a dominant position.”
 
Vestager broke down the commission’s probe of Google, which focused on three allegations: using their search to promote their dominance in online shopping; restricting a valuable advertising market; and using Android as a tool to dominate mobile search.


Vestager and the European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union, have been criticized by U.S. lawmakers and officials such as Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) and Treasury Secretary Jack Lew for targeting American companies, including Apple and Google. The commission has claimed it has no bias.
 
In a speech she gave on Tuesday at an anti-trust conference, Vestager defended the commission’s actions but did not elaborate on the Apple ruling or ongoing investigations of Amazon and Google. 
 
She did, however, indirectly respond to accusations that the commission was unfairly targeting U.S. businesses, specifically noting the new investigation into Luxembourg’s tax treatment of the French electric utility company GDF Suez group.