Battling The Gıants

Taking on global corporations is not for the faint-hearted, but it’s been the making of Margrethe Vestager.

- Suzy Hansen

ON A SOGGY, GUSTY MORNING IN BRUSSELS, Margrethe Vestager appears at work in a perfectly pressed green silk blouse and black leather skirt, not a spike of her short gray hair out of place. Vestager is known for being late—she likes to cram her schedule to overflowing—but today the European Union’s commissioner for competition is punctual, ready at noon for her seventh press conference in less than a year.

It is January 2016, and the 100 or so journalists gathered at the Berlaymont, the massive building that houses the European Commission, are anticipating a blockbuster statement from the Danish-born Vestager. She is ruling illegal a corporate tax-break system that Belgium had designed more than a decade before.

This state aid, known by its slogan “Only in Belgium”, slashed taxes on multinational corporations’ profits by up to 90 per cent. After its enactment in 2005, Belgium welcomed some 35 multinationals,including brewing giant AnheuserBusch InBev, BP and the telecoms firm Proximus. These businesses pumped jobs and money into the national economy: AB InBev, for instance, became Belgium’s largest company by market value, reporting global profits of nearly $26 billion in 2015.

Vestager, however, tells the reporters that corporations have dodged about €700 million in taxes, an “unfair competitive advantage” that is “bad for small companies who pay according to normal tax laws”. She insists the companies pay what they owe. “I hope that the decision we have taken today,” she says, “helps keep up the momentum to tackle tax avoidance not only in Europe, but also globally.”