In a 130-page decision from August that was made public on Monday, the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, asserted that two Apple units registered in Ireland brought in $130 billion in profit over an 11-year period that should have been taxed at Ireland’s 12.5% corporate tax rate, but instead remained largely untaxed anywhere.

As the WSJ noted, this is an early volley in the struggle by European Union authorities to impose their tax will on scofflaw sovereign nations who are so impertinent as to apply to multinational corporations doing business within them national tax schemes and such emoluments as these nations deem useful rather than acceding to their EU Know Betters.

Never mind that the members of the EU still are sovereign nations.

Never mind that, in the present case, Ireland simply applied its domestic law to that subset of an international corporation doing business from within Ireland.

Never mind that Ireland has an unacceptably low (to the EU Know Betters) corporate tax rate, and so it’s winning the competition with continental Europe to attract business.

Maybe Ireland should reevaluate its relationship with the European Union.