Text of the Open Letter
Ireland took over the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union on 1 July. During this six-month period, Europe will renegotiate its digital rulebook and its corporate tax rules. As Council President, Ireland will chair these negotiations and decide what matters are discussed.
Given Ireland’s questionable track record regarding the protection of EU digital rights and the EU’s fiscal base that we synthesize below, we the undersigned call on Ireland to recuse itself from any role in these two areas during the Irish presidency of the European Union.
Google, Meta, Apple, Microsoft, OpenAI, TikTok, and X all selected Ireland to be the location of their EU headquarters. This turned the Irish Data Protection Commission into the primary data watchdog for the whole of EU.
This responsibility has not been matched by effective enforcement. After ten years of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Ireland has yet to conclude a single EU-wide inquiry into Google. In 2023, Ireland took the extraordinary step of suing every other EU data protection authority at EU court in Luxembourg, seeking an annulment of an order that mandated Ireland to investigate Meta’s use of people’s most intimate data.
Recent developments also raise questions about the independence of Ireland’s digital governance. The current Data Protection Commissioner previously served as Meta’s chief lobbyist in Ireland. Additionally, in the run-up to the Presidency, Foreign Minister Helen McEntee posed with a Meta lobbyist, following their meeting to discuss priorities for Ireland’s upcoming Presidency.
Ireland’s tax policy is similarly troubling. It has helped multinationals to avoid paying tax in other European countries. Most notably, the European Commission decided in 2016 that Apple must pay €13 billion plus interest in back taxes that it had evaded between 2004-2014 by using the ‘Double Irish’ scheme to shift profits from other EU countries to Ireland, which taxed it effectively at mere 0.005% in the final year of the scheme. Following international pressure, in 2014, the Irish government announced it would abolish the widely used scheme. The EU courts confirmed the 2016 tax avoidance finding in 2024. However, Apple appears to have rebuilt a tax planning scheme through Ireland avoiding a further €20+ billion in EU taxes since 2016.
In 2025, Dublin-headquartered Chinese clothing giant Temu appeared to be using a scheme in which tax residency does not match the business location, reminiscent of the “Double Irish”. There is good reason to believe that Ireland continues to facilitate tax arbitrage by multinational corporations that impoverishes Europe. European Public Prosecutor’s Office staff raised serious concern about money laundering and criminal activity facilitated through an Irish tax planning scheme.
In short, Ireland’s reliance upon giant non-EU firms creates insurmountable conflicts of interest, as evidenced by the country’s track record in the area of data regulation and taxation.
We expect that Ireland will recuse itself from any role in these two areas during its presidency and as a practical matter, we propose therefore, that the re-negotiation of any relevant files is run by next country in line for the presidency – Lithuania.
Signatories
(in alphabetical order ; this list will be updated periodically)
- Asst. Prof. Abeba Birhane, Trinity College Dublin
- Prof. Alberto Alemanno, HEC Paris
- Dr. Francesco Brancaccio, Sciences Po
- Prof. Benedetta Brevini, University of Sydney and KU Leuven
- Prof. Florian Butollo, Goethe Universitat Frankfurt
- Prof. Joanna Bryson, Hertie School
- Assoc. Prof. David Carroll, The New School
- Assoc. Prof. Valeria Cirillo, University of Bari Aldi Moro
- Dr. Matthew Cole, University of Sussex
- Dr. Rosie Collington, Copenhagen Business School
- Prof. Nick Couldry, London School of Economics
- Assoc. Prof. Kati Cseres, ACELG, University of Amsterdam
- Assoc. Prof. Eileen Culloty, Dublin City University
- Visiting Fellow Pat de Brun, University College Dublin
- Prof. Cédric Durand, University of Geneva
- Prof. Timur Ergen, Universität Bremen
- Dr. Paolo Gerbaudo, Universidad Complutense de Madrid
- Prof. Seda Gürses, TU Delft
- Assoc. Prof. Inge Graef, Tilburg University
- Prof. Dario Guarascio, Sapienza University
- Prof. Hamed Haddadi, Imperial College London
- Prof. Natali Helberger, University of Amsterdam
- Prof. Jason Hickel, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
- Asst. Prof. Soheil Human, Vienna University of Economics and Business
- Assoc. Prof. Kristina Irion, University of Amsterdam
- Prof. Rainer Kattel, IIPP, University College London
- Asst. Prof. Konrad Kollnig, Maastricht University
- Emeritus Prof. Douwe Korff, London Metropolitan University
- Assoc. Prof. Filippo Lancieri, Georgetown Law
- Dr. Veiko Lember, Tallin University of Technology
- Prof. Stephan Lewandowsky, University of Bristol
- Prof. Mariana Mazzucato, IIPP, University College London
- Dr. Linda Monsees, Institute of International Relations Prague
- Prof. Daniel Mügge, University of Amsterdam
- Dr. Nessa Ní Chasaide, Maynooth University
- Prof. Barry O’Sullivan, University College Cork
- Prof. Ugo Pagano, University of Sienna
- Prof. Ronen Palan, City Universitat of London
- Dr. Harshvardhan Pandit, Trinity College Dublin
- Assoc. Prof. Edemilson Paraná, University College Dublin
- Dr. Dominik Piétron, Goethe University Frankfurt
- Prof. Jens Prüfer, Tilburg University and University of East Anglia
- Dr. Joel Rabinovich, King’s College London
- Prof. Aidan Regan, University College Dublin
- Assoc. Prof. Cecilia Rikap, IIPP, University College London
- Prof. Viktoria Robertson, Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien
- Assoc. Prof. Luc Rocher, University of Oxford
- Adj. Prof. Johnny Ryan, University College Dublin
- Dr. Anya Schiffrin, Columbia University
- Prof. Eugenia Siapera, University College Dublin
- Dr. Nick Srnicek, King’s College London
- Prof. Zephyr Teachout, Fordham University
- Prof. Matthias Thiemann, Sciences Po
- Prof. José-Ignacio Torreblanca, UNED University, Spain
- Assoc. Prof. Carissa Véliz, University of Oxford
- Prof. Simonetta Vezzoso, Trento University
- Prof. Sandra Wachter, University of Oxford
- Assoc. Prof. Isabella Weber, University of Massachusetts Amherst
- Asst. Prof. Raphaële Xenidis, Sciences Po
- Prof. Shoshana Zuboff, Harvard University
Press Coverage / In the Press
Recuse yourself: Hanging over the day was a letter, published in POLITICO and the Financial Times on Thursday, in which around 50 academics urged Ireland to recuse itself from digital and corporate tax files, citing its dependence on tech multinationals. Asked about it at Friday’s press conference, Burke rejected the charge. This is Ireland’s eighth presidency, he said, and the country has “a very strong track record of being an independent, honest broker.”
