the European Union has scored two major legal victories in separate cases against Apple and Google concluding a long running legal battle the European court of justice ruled that Apple must pay 13 million euro billion euros excuse me in back taxes to Ireland minutes later the court also upheld a 2.4 billion Euro fine against Google to tell us about these cases Arman Georgia our Europe editors with me now Arman a good day then for the EU well it's certainly a Vindication of what the European commission has been saying for years which is that uh multinationals are um abusing their Market position or uh doing tax dumping so these are two separate issues if if we look at the two companies concerned uh in the case of Apple there was already a European commission decision in 2016 which said that the deal between Apple and the Irish government to put Apple profits into this low tax economy in Ireland that that broke European rules uh so that was uh a final sort of vindication today from the European court of justice of the European commission's position on this and when it comes to uh Google there was already a fine several years ago issued against Google for uh that company favoring its own price comparison service and again today the European court of justice uh upheld that uh that notion um so I think it's not only a kind of um Vindication for uh what these what the other what the European commission has been saying but also kind of for the European Union's attempts to be seen as a super regulator and not only U Nadia when it comes to things like uh monopolies competition law uh tax dumping and so on but also on the broader social issues because remember we've also had a kind of stepping up of eu's ATT to regulate uh platforms when it comes to things like disinformation and hate speech in the context of Elections all of this through the Digital Services Act and the digital markets act so when the EU regulates it's not only about these kind of what might seems like some some narrow economic issues but also when it comes to these broader questions of uh the European model or what the EU would say its kind of overall values are as well well you say it's not just an economic issue and you also want to talk about the American election uh in the context of this news today how does this Tech Saga sort of play into potentially the presidential race well there's a parallel between you know what's happening here and in the United States because recently there was a US ruling uh on Google's market dominance so that signal a slightly close sort of um coming together on a sense of the European and American approaches of course they have different kind of philosophies when it comes to to um market dominance but remember also President Biden's executive order in 2021 which talked in very Stark terms about wanting a competitive uh Marketplace that has the welfare of workers Farmers small businesses startups and consumers at its heart and this very much uh Echoes what the EU has been saying for a long time about that Mark that the welfare of consumers should be at the heart of this kind of Regulation so I think there has been a certain um rap rmore between the US and the European positions under this Biden presidency with uh with Donald Trump it's a slightly different um situation uh he actually it's a bit complex because on the one hand Trump obviously he sees some big Tech firms as part of this establishment which is trying to muzzle free speech and so on but on the other hand he also sees some big Tech as uh kind of part of his America First policy so uh when Google was hit with this fine several years ago he railed against that railed against the EU and called the EU competition uh commissioner margara Vester the tax lady who hates the US she's still in that in that post so if he wins this election we could be back to a very different transatlantic relationships on these regulation issues as on trade and many other questions Arman georan thank you very much