The US Government is pumping up the pressure on the European Commission to stop hassling Apple and other companies with demands for huge bills for underpaid taxes.

The US Treasury Department in Washington said Brussels is taking on the role of a “supra-national tax authority” that threatens global tax reform deals.

“This shift in approach appears to expand the role of the commission’s Directorate-General for Competition” that goes “beyond enforcement of competition and state aid law,” the Treasury wrote in a paper.

“The cases cited by the commission do not give taxpayers prior notice that the commission would interpret its powers in this way or that selectivity would no longer be a meaningful precondition to a finding of state aid.”