EU to vet Microsoft pledges to avoid Teams antitrust fine

Microsoft committed to more clearly separate its communications app Teams from its Office products in a bid to avoid a EU fine for breaching competition rules, Brussels said Friday.

The European Commission said the US tech giant has put forward a series of commitments to turn the page on an antitrust investigation the EU launched in 2023.

Microsoft said the pledges were "the result of constructive, good-faith discussions" with the commission and would provide European customers with "more choices".


"We believe that they represent a clear and complete resolution to the concerns raised by our competitors," the firm said in a blog post.

Microsoft said it would sell its Office 365 and Microsoft 365 suites without Teams and at a lower price than the version including the conferencing app, according to the commission.

It would also allow customers to switch to packages without Teams, including within existing contracts, and to transfer their data for use in rival applications.

Finally, it pledged to improve the interoperability of rival applications with other Microsoft products.

Microsoft had already announced that it was separating Teams from its Office 365 and Microsoft 365 suites, which also include World, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook -- and that suites without Teams would be sold at a reduced price last year.

But the commission deemed these changes insufficient to address its concerns.

In preliminary findings to a probe triggered by a 2020 complaint from Slack, a Teams competitor, the commission said Microsoft violated antitrust rules abusing its dominant position by bundling Teams with other products.

On Friday the EU's influential antitrust regulator invited all interested parties to submit comments on the proposal within a month.

If the opinions collected confirm that the commitments are sufficient, Brussels could make them legally binding, allowing Microsoft to avoid a potentially hefty financial penalty.

But if it fails to honour its promises, the group, which has been sanctioned several times by Brussels in the past, could be fined up to 10% of its global turnover.