After Apple, the EU starts the war against Facebook

World News Adina Camarasu
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Why Brussels accuses the social media giant?

The European Commission accused on Tuesday the social network Facebook for supplying misleading information during the takeover of the messaging service WhatsApp.

This allegation opens the way to possible fines of up to 1% of its turnover, informs Reuters.

However, the EU executive said that this procedure will have no impact on approving the transaction of $ 22 billion completed in 2014.

The dispute targets a privacy change, adopted by WhatsApp in August, according to which messaging service will share some of the telephone numbers of users with Facebook.

This announcement triggered a series of investigations from several protection data EU agencies.

The Commission points out that in the notification regarding the acquisition of WhatsApp, Facebook has assured that it will not automatically associate the users’ accounts of the two companies.

Facebook has to address Brussels until on January 31, 2017. If these concerns will be confirmed, the Commission could fine American group with an amount equivalent to 1% of its turnover, which in 2015 was calculated to $ 17.9 billion.

The European Commission also has a dispute with Apple, which it accuses to allocate almost all profits from sales in Europe to a series of ‘head offices’ in Ireland who benefit from a special tax regime.

Company tax in Ireland is particularly low, 12,5%, but according to the European Commission in Ireland, Apple paid a tax of only 1% in 2013 and one of only 0.005% in 2014.

In response, the government in Dublin insisted that it does not intend to recover the money because the US company did not benefit from tax preferential treatment and the EU did not understand how tax laws apply to Irish fiscality.