{"id":628324,"date":"2026-09-18T07:46:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-18T07:46:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/628324\/"},"modified":"2026-09-18T07:46:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-18T07:46:09","slug":"french-minister-wants-ireland-to-share-its-technology-tax-billions-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/628324\/","title":{"rendered":"French minister wants Ireland to share its technology tax billions \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The large tax revenues Ireland<\/a> earns from multinational tech companies should be \u201credistributed\u201d more fairly among other European countries as they stem from income made across the continent, France\u2019s minister for finance has said.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt 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,\u201d Lescure said in an interview with The Irish Times.<\/p>\n

\u201cI 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,\u201d he continued.<\/p>\n

He said there was a need to \u201cmake sure that everyone gets their fair share of a cake, that\u2019s a European cake, not an Irish cake\u201d. <\/p>\n

His comments were made as it emerged that confidential figures prepared by the Department of Finance<\/a> suggest 2026 corporation tax<\/a> returns will exceed already elevated forecasts.<\/p>\n

Confidential figures prepared for meetings this week between Taoiseach Miche\u00e1l Martin and T\u00e1naiste Simon Harris suggest receipts from the tax on business profits would surpass the department\u2019s \u20ac35.3 billion April forecast by a wide margin. <\/p>\n

The improving outlook may yet increase scope for new spending and tax measures for Budget 2027<\/a> next month. <\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re behind, but we can catch up. If the call for a slowdown means we freeze the [AI] leadership situation where they are now, it\u2019s not working,\u201d Lescure said.<\/p>\n

The EU has to catch up with the US and China on AI or risk losing \u201cprosperity and sovereignty\u201d as it is forced to follow \u201cother players\u2019 regulations, other players\u2019 rules\u201d, he said.<\/p>\n

Finance ministers are due to discuss AI at the meeting at Dublin Castle. The Irish presidency is also brokering negotiations on the EU\u2019s 2027 budget, a topic of deep division among the 27 member states.<\/p>\n

Lescure pushed back against calls to pare down the proposed budget by hundreds of billions of euro by a group of so-called \u201cfrugal\u201d countries headed by Germany.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need an ambitious budget,\u201d Lescure said. \u201cWe need to make sure we spend on things that are important.\u201d<\/p>\n

The budget should ensure the EU is able to operate independently in four crucial areas, Lescure said: \u201csovereignty on defence, sovereignty on digital services, sovereignty on food, sovereignty on energy\u201d.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Interview: French minister with a soft spot for Donegal faces his toughest test yet Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

This may need to be funded by new taxes levied directly in Brussels, he added, such as the levy on high-carbon imports from countries with lower environmental standards, the carbon border adjustment mechanism.<\/p>\n

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 \u201crace to the bottom in terms of regulation\u201d if national authorities kept their powers.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is one of the main challenges to me of the Irish presidency. We need to move forward on this front. We\u2019ve been speaking about it for way too long, for decades,\u201d Lescure said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The large tax revenues Ireland earns from multinational tech companies should be \u201credistributed\u201d more fairly among other European…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":628325,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[218,72,24463,1398,5148,1814,61,60],"class_list":["post-628324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-business","tag-corporation-tax","tag-department-of-finance","tag-european-union","tag-france","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=628324"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628324\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/628325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=628324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=628324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=628324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}