The European Union has launched legal proceeding against the UK concerning London’s failure to recover €100 million ($119mn) of state aid which allegedly gave multinational companies based in Gibraltar an unfair advantage.

On Friday, Margrethe Vestager, the European Commission vice president responsible for competition, announced that Britain would be referred to the EU Court of Justice for breaking European laws on state aid and failing to act on the commission’s requests from 2018. The recipients of the state aid were