Today is a big day for Margrethe Vestager, the outgoing European Commissioner for Competition. The European Court of Justice has recognized her with two important, and above all definitive, victories against the large Internet companies with which the greatest European exponent of competition has engaged in a 10-year-long duel: Apple and Google.

The most iconic case is the one with Apple, against which the European Commission had decided, back in 2016, that some of the group’s companies located in Ireland had benefited for a certain period (at least from 1991 to 2014) from tax advantages constituting illegal state aid. The favorable tax treatment was in fact granted by Ireland, that is, the country where Apple and other Internet giants usually locate their European offices for tax reasons. However, in 2020 the General Court, that is, the appeal judge within the European jurisdiction, had annulled the decision adopted by the Commission, considering that the latter had not sufficiently demonstrated the existence of a selective advantage in favor of Apple companies. The annulment of the decision had sounded like a disavowal of Vestager’s entire strategy towards global Internet companies and, in some way, may have weighed on her subsequent political path in the Commission.

With today’s ruling, however, the European Court has re-established the correctness of the 2016 decision and Ireland will now have to recover 13 billion euros from Apple (so it is not a fine, but unpaid taxes). Now Vestager is leaving the European Commission, but with honor, and her former officials find themselves with a formidable weapon in their hands, as they will be able to continue pursuing national tax rulings, thus endangering the tax strategy of global multinationals (Internet but not only) that when they establish themselves in the EU choose some small European countries in order to obtain unrepeatable tax conditions – Ireland first and foremost, but not only: at least Luxembourg, Malta, Cyprus and even the Netherlands are added to the list. This is a practice that discriminates against other European countries, which lose tax revenue, but also against ordinary businesses, which find themselves competing with global giants that pay less taxes than them. This means that the next European Commissioner for Competition, whoever he or she will be, will have in his or her hands an extremely important deterrent tool in defining the rules with global multinational companies, especially the Internet – but not only.

The other important case is that of Google Shopping. In 2017, the Commission had imposed a fine of approximately 2.4 billion euros on Google for having abused its dominant position on various national Internet search markets by favoring its own product comparison service over that of its competitors. Since the European General Court had essentially confirmed this decision and maintained the abovementioned fine, Google and Alphabet had brought an appeal before the Court, which has now been rejected by the latter, thus confirming the ruling of the General Court. The Google Shopping case is therefore closed before the European Court of Luxembourg but will now continue in Brussels, since the issue of the treatment of price comparison sites is covered by the Digital Market Act, the European law that regulates Internet gatekeepers.

It should be noted that in 2023 the European Court of Justice confirmed the correctness of another Vestager decision, unjustly annulled by the General Court: the one concerning the Hutchison-O2 merger in the United Kingdom in 2016.

All these judicial victories of Vestager come precisely at a time when in Europe some companies and politicians are complaining about too much competition, indicating the outgoing commissioner as responsible. The Draghi report itself blames competition for some so-called European ills, for example the industrial structure and the level of prices in telecoms. The message from the Luxembourg judges could not be clearer and could weigh on the imminent decisions regarding the choice of portfolios of future European commissioners, competition first and foremost.