Irish EU presidency should sit out talks on tax and digital files over ‘over conflicts of interest’, academics say

The Irish EU presidency should recuse itself from any legislative files on tax because of its “questionable track record regarding the protection of EU digital rights and the EU’s fiscal base,” a group of 60 leading academics urged on Wednesday (8 July).

In a letter seen by EUobserver, the group of senior university professors and lecturers pointed to the cosy relationship between successive Irish governments and Big Tech and other corporate giants.

Last October, Niamh Sweeney, a former lobbyist for Meta, joined the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) as commissioner, making her one of Europe’s most powerful data watchdogs.

Ireland’s 12.5 percent corporate tax rate is one of the lowest across the bloc and has been designed to attract Big Tech firms and others wishing to minimise their tax burden. That has seen tech giants including Google, Meta, Apple, Microsoft, OpenAI, TikTok, and X make Ireland their EU domicile for tax.

That, in turn, makes Ireland’s data protection commission a gatekeeper for the rest of the EU.