The Advocate General of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) this Thursday recommended overturning the ruling that the Irish state’s aid to Apple was lawful and recommended a new trial in the case.
In an opinion published this Thursday, Advocate General Giovanni Pitruzzella recommends that the EU General Court’s ruling be overturned because he believes it made “several errors of law” when it annulled the European Commission’s decision to declare the state illegal. Irish tax rulings against two Apple group companies: Apple Sales International (ASI) and Apple Operations Europe (AOE).
In 2016, a community leader ordered Ireland to recover $13 billion in government aid from Apple, finding that the tax cuts constituted illegal government aid.
The EU General Court overturned this decision in 2020, but the European Commission later appealed to the CJEU.
According to the court’s statement, Pitruzzella believes that “the General Court committed several errors of law when it stated that the Commission did not provide sufficient evidence that the intellectual property licenses owned by ASI and AOE, as well as the corresponding profits received, from sales of Apple products outside the United States shall be classified as Irish branches for tax purposes.”
The Advocate General’s opinion is not binding on the court, but is usually followed by judges.