As an European I totally agree with Apple assessment. One of the ways small European countries have to compete and attract mass scale businesses such as the ones of Apple, against big countries like Germany and France is by negotiating better tax conditions.
Considering the small dimensions and population of these countries versus the massive scale of these companies businesses they can at a lower tax, supply financially their needs lawfully.
Of course the German, the French and the soon to leave the British, don’t like this. Their view is anti competitive. They want to have the advantages of being geographically big and large populations as well as tax advantages. They have cooked the European competition laws to their advantage but the issue of sovereignty has kept them from touching local / country tax laws. If they see this through they will be able to do whatever with local tax laws, and cook them to their advantage.
This is as ridiculous as small countries advocating that it’s unfair for them to be geographically small or not as well positioned in the flux of businesses in the map.
Mind you that all the loans given to smaller countries at better rates were for their development in exchange of commercial and production quotas towards the larger countries with plenty of agricultural fields and industrial capacity. So the lunch was not at all free. The all thing culminated with the Greek incident with the German suggestion for them to sell Islands in order to pay their dept.
Cheers.
