The Eurocrat Who Makes Corporate America Tremble

The Black Diamond library sits at a slight forward slant on Copenhagen’s riverfront, resembling a pair of Borg spaceships peering into the water. On the morning of a European Commission citizens’ dialogue in early February, the building’s coal-dark facades were slicked with rain and mist, but more than 100 people had trooped into its auditorium. The event was an episode in a traveling roadshow in which the 28 European Union commissioners—one per member state, each with a portfolio such as trade or transport—take turns fielding questions and explaining their policies. This was the 131st such dialogue since late 2014, and it was genteel in a typically EU way: fruit and water before, wine and finger food after, and an evident faith throughout that civil, measured discussion can resolve any problem.

One of the two commissioners anchoring the dialogue was Margrethe Vestager, the Danish politician who has found a heated celebrity as head of the EU’s directorate general for competition. Her job as chief sleuth requires her to protect the union’s vision of a fair market, and she’s set about it with gusto. Last August, Vestager announced that Ireland had granted Apple Inc. illegal tax benefits, and she directed the company to pay more than $14 billion in back taxes and interest. It was a rare boulder slung at a Goliath, and it drew cheers in many quarters in the U.S. and overseas.