Jaromir Miko Apple CEO Tim Cook will soon add another award to his account, this time from Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadka. According to the state investment agency IDA Ireland, the prime minister will give Tim Cook an award on January 20 for the fact that the company has been investing in the countryside for 40 years and has long been among the country's largest employers.
However, the decision attracted attention not because Apple has been investing here for several decades in the development of its European infrastructure, but mainly because of the controversies that accompanied the relationship between Apple and Ireland in recent years. Indeed, Ireland provided Apple with large tax breaks and benefits, which the European Commission became interested in. After the investigation, it awarded the Californian company a record fine of 13 billion euros for tax evasion.
Apple has also recently shelved its plans to build a data center in western Ireland. He cited problems with the planning system as the reason for postponing the billion-dollar investment. Ireland also faces parliamentary elections in the coming months, so some see the decision to award Tim Cook as a marketing move by the current opposition-criticized prime minister.
On the same day, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai will also visit Europe to present the company's vision for the development of responsible artificial intelligence in front of the Bruegel think tank in Brussels. Microsoft President Brad Smith will also visit Brussels to present his new book Tools and Weapons: The Promise and the Peril of the Digital Age (Tools and Weapons: Hopes and Threats in the Digital Age).
Both events precede a meeting of the European Commission on plans to support the ethical development of artificial intelligence.
Source: Bloomberg
