Microsoft Gets European Justice

When Microsoft took on the European Union in the European Court of Justice, the Trumpetwarned it was going to lose. Why? The ecj operates on the old Roman premise that the accused is guilty until proven innocent. Under that system, EU victory was assured from the outset.

Since that time, the EU Commission has ordered Microsoft to pay a gargantuan fine ($613 million), to provide documentation for its competitors to achieve interoperability with its products, and to provide a version of Windows without a media player included.

Last week, the Commission kicked it up another notch: Microsoft has until Jan. 25, 2006, to comply to the ruling. Then Microsoft will be fined $2.37 million dollars a day until the EU is satisfied that Microsoft has complied entirely, retroactive to December 15 this year.

Microsoft legal chief Brad Smith was nonplussed, responding, “We’ve shipped a new version of Windows, we’ve paid a historic fine, and we’ve provided unprecedented access to Microsoft technology to promote interoperability with other industry players. In total, we have now responded to more than 100 requests from the Commission” (bbc News, December 22).

Not enough. According to the bbc, he also said “the firm had done its utmost to comply with the EU’s demands, but Brussels kept changing the goalposts.”

Microsoft has already lost the battle. The question now is, how much worse can it get? How much more money will the EU take before it either accepts Microsoft’s efforts or kicks the giant U.S. software company out of Europe altogether?

The EU Commission does wield tremendous power, even in the United States. This is the same body that blocked a $42 billion acquisition of Honeywell International by General Electric in 2001, stopping dead a U.S. merger that had been approved by Washington. It is also the same venerable institution that fired Bernard Connolly for exposing EU corruption, then tried his appeal in the European Court of “Justice.”

If Microsoft wanted justice, this particular institution of unelected officials was an unfortunate venue in which to find it dispensed.

For more information on the European Commission, read our November 2002 article “Silence the Critic.”