By Edith Hancock


The European Union's competition regulator formally closed probes into Amazon, Starbucks and Fiat's European tax cases, bringing an end to three of its attempts to crack down on multinationals' tax deals after court defeats.

The regulator's largely symbolic decision Thursday came after EU courts ruled between 2019 and 2023 that the bloc's executive was wrong to charge the Netherlands and Luxembourg with giving companies unfair advantages through tax breaks in a string of in-depth state-aid investigations.

The European Commission said in 2015 and 2017 that Luxembourg gave selective tax advantages to Stellantis-owned Fiat and Amazon, and the Netherlands to Starbucks, by issuing rulings that artificially lowered how much tax they owed. Those decisions were later reversed by judges in Luxembourg who said the commission made errors in its investigations into the companies' deals and didn't demonstrate they received a selective advantage.

Fiat, Amazon and Starbucks are just three of the multinationals the commission has investigated over tax deals in the bloc using its state-aid rules, one of the cornerstones of departing Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager's enforcement policies.

The investigations that EU regulators closed Thursday threatened to derail the commission's crackdown when they were struck down in court. The effort got a new lease of life in September when judges ordered Apple to pay Ireland 13 billion euros ($13.74 billion), plus interest, in taxes.

EU judges confirmed in the recent Apple ruling that the European Commission was right in challenging certain aggressive tax-ruling practices and set the benchmark to assess tax-planning practices in other judgments, Vestager said.

Vestager is due to leave her post at the Commission in days.


Write to Edith Hancock at edith.hancock@wsj.com


(END) Dow Jones Newswires

11-28-24 0845ET