The European Commission has withdrawn its court action against Ireland over taxes it is owed by Apple.

The commission said this follows confirmation by Ireland that all the funds have been paid.

It has therefore decided to withdraw its court action.

On August 30th 2016, the commission adopted a State aid decision - finding that Ireland had granted undue tax benefits of up to €13bn to the technology company.

The commission concluded that these tax benefits were illegal under EU State aid rules, as they allowed Apple to pay substantially less tax on profits recorded in Ireland than other companies.

Speaking at the time, European Commissioner for Competition Margrethe Vestager said: "Member states cannot give tax benefits to selected companies - this is illegal under EU state aid rules.

"The commission's investigation concluded that Ireland granted illegal tax benefits to Apple, which enabled it to pay substantially less tax than other businesses over many years.

"In fact, this selective treatment allowed Apple to pay an effective corporate tax rate of 1% on its European profits in 2003 down to 0.005% in 2014."

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This followed an an in-depth state aid investigation that was launched in June 2014.

The European Commission found two tax rulings issued by Ireland to Apple "substantially and artificially lowered" the tax paid by Apple in Ireland since 1991.

It ordered Ireland to recover the amount of taxes that should have been paid by Apple.

The deadline for Ireland to do this was January 3rd, 2017.

Following delays, the commission referred Ireland to the European Court of Justice last October.

But on September 6th this year, Ireland completed the recovery of the aid.

A total of €14.3bn - including interest - was repaid by Apple into an escrow fund pending the final judgments of the EU courts.

In a statement on Thursday, the European Commission said: "Taking into account that the payment into the escrow fund of the illegal aid removed the distortion of competition caused by that aid, the commission has today decided to withdraw the court action."