The EU’s top competition watchdog, Margrethe Vestager, is stepping down after ten years. Before that, she achieved two important victories for the EU Commission: she forced Apple and Ireland to adopt fair taxation and Google to compete fairly.
The highest court in the European Union does not care about terms of office or political calendars. But on Tuesday it seemed as if the judges at the ECJ in Luxembourg wanted to make sure that Margrethe Vestager could still celebrate her victories while in office. Shortly before she vacates her office in the European Commission building in Brussels, the EU’s top competition watchdog triumphed in two of the most important cases ever brought by this authority: Apple must pay 13 billion euros in back taxes in Ireland, the court ruled, and Google lost the long-running dispute over a fine of 2.42 billion euros because the company discriminated against competitors and favored its own products.