The European Commission is to step up pressure on Microsoft on Wednesday to respect a 2004 antitrust ruling, by slapping huge new daily fines on the defiant software group.
With an irritated Microsoft flaunting the ruling, the EU’s competition watchdog is poised to impose fines as high as â,¬2-million ($2,55-million) per day backdated to December 15.
Fines for the seven-month period since then could therefore reach as high as â,¬400-million.
Future daily fines could run as high as â,¬3-million however if Microsoft still has not satisfied the EU regulators’ demands by the end of the month, sources said on Tuesday.
Microsoft has already paid dearly for its stand-off with the European Commission, which levied a record fine of â,¬497-million on the company in March 2004.
After a five-year investigation, the commission took its biggest competition decision ever in ruling that Microsoft had broken EU law by using a quasi-monopoly in personal computer operating systems to thwart rivals.
In addition to fining Microsoft, the EU ordered the company to sell a version of its Windows operating system without Media Player software and to divulge information on Windows needed by makers of rival products.
Although Microsoft has paid the fine, it has fought tooth-and-nail over the information it is supposed to reveal to competitors.
Fed up that Microsoft is still defiant after more than two years, EU Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes warned last week that new daily fines were all but inevitable.
“I can’t imagine another way,” Kroes said when quizzed about the issue.
Microsoft says that it is releasing reams of key computer code needed by programmers of rival products and claims that further fines are unfair.
Microsoft also argues that if it is not complying with the decision it is because the commission was too vague in the 2004 ruling about what the company needed to do.
The Microsoft stand-off with Brussels is testing not only EU regulators’ patience but also their authority.
The company challenged the 2004 ruling in the EU’s second-highest court in April, but the judges are not expected to hand down a decision before the end of the year. – AFP