EU ‘tax lady’ who hit US tech firms ‘out’ of top antitrust job: report

The top EU bureaucrat who fined US tech giants billions of dollars is set to be forced out of her job, the Financial Times reported on Friday.

Margrethe Vestager, a former deputy prime minister of Denmark, has sparked fury on this side of the Atlantic during her decade as Europe’s antitrust enforcer raking in large sums from some of America’s most successful companies.

“Vestager is out. Nobody owes her anything,” a former Danish minister told the FT. It comes after her left-wing Liberal party lost their place in the country’s coalition government.

The British financial newspaper reported that her influence has started to wane in recent years after a series of legal challenges to her antitrust rulings and that France was blocking her bid for a new gig leading the EU’s financial arm, the European Investment Bank.

The 56-year-old handed Google with more than $10 billion in fines during her tenure, including a $4 billion levy in 2018 that was the biggest in EU antitrust history.

She and the EU’s executive branch, the European Commission, accused the search giant of illegally using its Android mobile technology to “cement its domination position” over its rivals.

New rules, known as the Digital Markets Act, give Vestager the power to hand out penalties of up to 10% of a company’s total global turnover if they are deemed to be acting illegally.

She used them to fine Silicon Valley giant Apple $2 billion in March of this year for allegedly hindering music streaming competition..

That can rise to up to 20% for repeat offenders, and in extreme circumstances lead to the break-up of a company.

Firms in her firing line can appeal, but they face a lengthy legal battle before they can clear their name in the EU courts.

Her rulings even drew the ire of former president Donald Trump in 2018 who told EU officials that Vestager “really hates the U.S” after she clashed with a series of major American companies.

Its CEO Tim Cook, speaking in 2014, also called her attempt to claw back $13 billion in tax revenues from its sweetheart tax deal in Ireland as “total political crap”.

A final decision in the long-running legal row is expected from European judges within the coming months.

In the US, the Justice Department recently filed a landmark antitrust suit alleging Apple has engaged in anti-competitive behavior to ensure the dominance of its iPhone in the smartphone market.

Other American firms ordered to cough up billions of dollars by unelected EU bureaucrats include Facebook parent Meta, Microsoft, Amazon and chipmaker Intel.

Top officials, or commissioners, at the EU’s headquarters in Brussels, Belgium can rake in a tax-free salary of at least $310,000 a year, or $26,000 a month.

They also enjoy as lavish perks such as a 16% expat bonus on top of their salary and chauffeur-driven limousines to ferry them around the Belgian capital.

Each member of the 27-nation club can nominate someone for one of the cushy jobs. Those nominations are then effectively rubber-stamped by all EU governments and lawmakers in the European Parliament.

Tensions with Brussels were raised once more earlier this week when Frenchman Thierry Breton, a fellow EU commissioner, issued a bizarre diktat to X owner Elon Musk ahead of his interview with Donald Trump.

Breton, who is reportedly eyeing Vestager’s job, warned him the livestream could “generate detrimental effects on civic discourse and public security” due to “a risk of amplification of potentially harmful content.”

“The European Union should mind their own business instead of trying to meddle in the U.S. Presidential election,” Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said in response.

“Let us be very clear: the European Union is an enemy of free speech and has no authority of any kind to dictate how we campaign,” he added