Apple & Amazon Cases - Illegal State Aid or a New Tax Battle between the EU and US?

The European Commission (EC) declared that Ireland “granted undue tax benefits of up to €13 billion to Apple” and instructed Ireland to recover the undue tax benefits. Amazon has been ordered to repay €250m in illegal state aid to Luxembourg. On June 27, 2016, the EC published its decision concluding that an advance pricing agreement (APA) granted to a Starbucks subsidiary by the Netherlands is illegal state aid and ordering recovery of the aid by the Netherlands.
The Commission adopted a couple of other decisions and a number of other cases are still under investigation. Appeals have been lodged against each of these Commission decisions, and the position of the General Court is eagerly awaited.
The EU is not claiming Apple or other multinationals broke any tax rules but that their “sweetheart” from EU Member States were, in fact, illegal because their tax arrangement gave unfair advantages and therefore amounted to illegal “state aid” affecting the internal market.
We will analyse the cases from the Competition Law, EU Law, and Tax Law perspective and elaborate on whether we are facing a technical discussion related to fair trade and taxation or a competition conflict between the European Union and the United States. And how this is connected with the fact that there is no harmonisation of direct taxation but that tax advantages are being targeted as illegal aids. We will also identify universal lessons that can be learnt from those cases for other undertakings operating in the EU and benefiting from favourable tax treatment.