Fiat Chrysler have won their appeal on Tuesday 8th November against an EU order to pay back taxes to Luxembourg of around 30 million euros (£26 million). This began as Margrethe Vestager tries to crack down on deals between EU countries and multinationals.

Vestager has claimed that in 2015, Fiat Chrysler was engaging complex strategies to lower the companies’ taxes which gave an unfair advantage and was granted by Luxembourg.

In 2019 a lower tribunal backed Vestager’s decision which The Court of the European Union (CJEU) then disagreed with this judgment.

Stellantis, the result of Fiat Chrysler and PSA Group merging in 2020, released a statement that said they are pleased that the CJEU has acknowledged the Commission was wrong to consider its tax ruling to be unlawful state aid.

Vestager tweeted the ruling was “a big loss for tax fairness”.

Vestager has been involved in some high-profile cases such as Apple and Amazon’s Luxembourg deal with a tax order for a record 13 billion euros (£11.4 billion). Apple and Amazon have won their lower tribunal cases which the Commission has appealed against with rulings due in the coming years.

Vestager is investigating Swedish furniture retailer Ikea and U.S. sportswear maker Nike’s (NKE.N) Dutch tax deals, Finnish food and drink packaging company Huhtamaki’s (HUH1V.HE) tax deal with Luxembourg and Belgium’s tax rulings on 39 multinational companies.

In October 2021, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) said 136 countries agreed on taking a step towards making the world’s biggest companies to pay a fair share of tax, hoping for a global minimum corporate tax rate of 15% to be imposed by 2023.

The cases are C-885/19 P and C-898/19 P.

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