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* The US fined VW fair and square. VW has a large North American business anyway - there is no significant US/EU "trade war". Besides, American car manufacturer

* The US fined VW fair and square. VW has a large North American business anyway - there is no significant US/EU "trade war". Besides, American car manufacturers like GM are also implicated: https://electrek.co/2017/05/25/gm-dieselgate-scandal/ https://electrek.co/2017/05/25/gm-dieselgate-scandal/ * Ireland is in the EU and contributes towards the EU's coffers. * The EU is also going after VW ( http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/eu-sues-germany-and-britain-over-volkswagen-emissions-scandal-a7462936.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/eu-sues-germ... ), but the responsibility in this case lies with individual member-state governments, rather than any single EU organ, and there is evidence that VW carefully gamed the situation so their defeat-devices were technically legal in the EU ( https://www.ft.com/content/0b9bf1d2-e486-11e6-9645-c9357a75844a?mhq5j=e1 https://www.ft.com/content/0b9bf1d2-e486-11e6-9645-c9357a758... )

petre 9y ago
While I agree with all of your points, we have yet to see GM being fined in the US. Otherwise VW is probably the worst offender and still getting a pat on the back in the EU. The EU plans to punish VW since 2015. Rather than do that, they went after individual member states (backed by taxpayers) for failing to punish VW. Ireland gave some big corps special tax deals as it's the case with Apple. It's also used by big corps to pass earnings through as it had lower corporate taxes compared to other member states. This is an Irish feature and a flaw in the tax policies of other EU states, which the EU tried to fix with transfer taxes. What I am saying is that the EU is failing to punish VW while being maybe a little too harsh on US corps. I think we can all agree VW is a much worse offender than Google: selling cars that poison the air and lie about it vs. a few search results clearly labelled as sponsored ads up on the first page.

petre 9y ago

While I agree with all of your points, we have yet to see GM being fined in the US. Otherwise VW is probably the worst offender and still getting a pat on the back in the EU. The EU plans to punish VW since 2015. Rather than do that, they went after individual member states (backed by taxpayers) for failing to punish VW. Ireland gave some big corps special tax deals as it's the case with Apple. It's also used by big corps to pass earnings through as it had lower corporate taxes compared to other member states. This is an Irish feature and a flaw in the tax policies of other EU states, which the EU tried to fix with transfer taxes. What I am saying is that the EU is failing to punish VW while being maybe a little too harsh on US corps. I think we can all agree VW is a much worse offender than Google: selling cars that poison the air and lie about it vs. a few search results clearly labelled as sponsored ads up on the first page.