French minister wants Ireland to share its technology tax billions

The large tax revenues Ireland earns from multinational tech companies should be “redistributed” more fairly among other European countries as they stem from income made across the Continent, France’s minister for finance has said.Roland Lescure was speaking in advance of a visit to Dublin for talks with the 26 other EU finance ministers on Friday and Saturday under the Irish presidency of the Council of the European Union.“At the moment, for obvious reasons, Ireland is getting a big share of the global taxation because most of the digital global companies have got their headquarters in Ireland,” Lescure said in an interview with The Irish Times.“I think the redistribution of the taxes and the receipts that come out of the digital services that are making their income on the whole of Europe has to be fairly distributed,” he continued.READ MOREHe said there was a need to “make sure that everyone gets their fair share of a cake, that’s a European cake, not an Irish cake.” His comments were made as it emerged that confidential figures prepared by the Department of Finance suggest 2026 corporation tax returns will exceed already elevated forecasts.Confidential figures prepared for meetings this week between Taoiseach Micheál Martin and Tánaiste Simon Harris suggest receipts from the tax on business profits will surpass the department’s €35.3 billion April forecast by a wide margin. The improving outlook may yet increase scope for new spending and tax measures for Budget 2027 next month. Meanwhile, Lescure also rejected calls for a slowdown on the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI), saying Europe needed to be allowed to catch up first, after several US tech leaders called for caution due to potential dangers posed by the technology.“We’re behind, but we can catch up. If the call for a slowdown means we freeze the [AI] leadership situation where they are now, it’s not working,” Lescure said.The EU has to catch up with the US and China on AI or risk losing “prosperity and sovereignty” as it is forced to follow “other players’ regulations, other players’ rules”, he said.Finance ministers are due to discuss AI at the meeting at Dublin Castle. The Irish presidency is also brokering negotiations on the EU’s 2027 budget, a topic of deep division among the 27 member states.Lescure pushed back against calls to pare down the proposed budget by hundreds of billions of euro by a group of so-called “frugal” countries headed by Germany.“We need an ambitious budget,” Lescure said. “We need to make sure that we spend on things that are important.”The budget should ensure that the EU is able to operate independently in four crucial areas, Lescure said: “sovereignty on defence, sovereignty on digital services, sovereignty on food, sovereignty on energy.”[ Interview: French minister with a soft spot for Donegal faces his toughest test yet Opens in new window ]This may need to be funded by new taxes levied directly in Brussels, he added, like the levy on high-carbon imports from countries with lower environmental standards, the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism.Lescure also spoke about the need for centralised supervision of EU financial markets by the Paris-based European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), to avoid complexity for companies and a “race to the bottom in terms of regulation” if national authorities kept their powers.The issue is the subject of negotiations under the Irish presidency, as the Government seeks to broker a long-delayed deal on the capital markets union, which proponents believe is necessary for Europe to reach its full economic potential.The reform would harmonise rules to encourage companies to become listed on stock exchanges in Europe and to develop a culture of ordinary people investing in European companies akin to that of the United States.“This is one of the main challenges to me of the Irish presidency. We need to move forward on this front. We’ve been speaking about it for way too long, for decades,” Lescure said.“We want the ESMA to be in charge of the big players. The big American banks are making more business in Europe than the big European banks. This has to change.”