The European Commission won’t limit how much it seeks to claw back from Apple if its controversial Irish tax agreement with the Government is found to have fallen foul of state aid rules.

The financial health of firms including Apple that are under investigation wouldn’t warrant special treatment to avoid harming the economy - even if recovery amounts were in the billions of euros, said Gert-Jan Koopman, the EU official in charge of the unit policing state subsidies that skew competition.

“The odds and stakes for the companies concerned are massive,” Mr Koopman, the European commission’s deputy director- general for state aid, said in an interview in Brussels.

“The concept of too big to fail in terms of recovery doesn’t exist.”

The EU is seeking to wrap up investigations into separate tax deals struck by Apple, Amazon, Fiat Finance and Trade and Starbucks in three EU countries including Ireland.

The inquiries come amid a global crackdown on corporate taxavoidance as governments struggle to increase revenue and reduce deficits.

Mr Koopman stressed that no final decisions have been made in any of the cases. The EU also doesn’t always ask national governments to recover benefits that are determined to be illegal aid. At this stage the commission is “not at all in a position to speculate” about the amount of any potential recovery, said Mr Koopman, who worked at The Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy before joining the EU in 1991.

In addition to the inquiries concerning Apple and Ireland, Starbucks and The Netherlands, and Amazon and Fiat Finance in Luxembourg, the commission is scrutinising tax deals throughout the EU that may have given companies unfair advantages.

Bloomberg