Intesa between Microsoft and the European Antitrust Authority: the EU Commission has accepted the commitments of the Usa Giant to respond to the findings on the integration of the Teams communication platform in the company suite Office 365 and Microsoft 365. The Redmond group will offer versions without Teams at a reduced price, will allow data portability and will guarantee interoperability with competing products. “With this decision – said the Vice President of the EU Commission Teresa Ribera – Competition opens in a crucial market and companies will be able to freely choose the most suitable collaboration tools”.
The commitments, made binding for seven years, aim to restore conditions of competition in a sector dominated for a long time by the obligatory integration of Teams with Redmond’s productivity applications. The measures cover four main areas: the possibility of purchasing versions of the suite without Teams, the obligation to provide a lower price for these versions, the guarantee of interoperability with third party applications and data portability. As for interoperability and portability date, the duration of the commitments is more extensive: ten years. The application of the agreements will be supervised by an independent trustee, in charge of monitoring compliance with the obligations, mediate in the event of disputes between Microsoft and competitors and periodically report to Brussels. If the US giant does not respect the conditions, the EU Antitrustust may impose fines of up to 10% of global turnover or daily penalties of up to 5% of the turnover.
The story starts in 2023, when Slack – today part of Salesforce – presented a complaint by accusing Microsoft of abuse of the dominant position. Shortly afterwards the German Alfview was added. The Commission opened a formal investigation, contesting that the automatic inclusion of Teams in the company suite violates article 102 of the EU Treaty, hindering competition in communication and collaboration services on the cloud. After the communication of the charges in 2024 and an intense comparison with the market, Microsoft had already introduced some voluntary changes, however judged insufficient. The final package of commitments was tested with a market test between May and June 2025. The results led to a strengthening of the measures, in particular with the increase in the price gap between the suite with and without Teams by 50% compared to the initial proposal. Today the difference oscillates between 1.50 euros and 8 euros depending on the type of package, from the basic versions to the season tickets for large companies.
A relevant chapter concerns the possibility for customers already linked by multi -year contracts to move on to versions without Teams before the natural expiry of the licenses. An element designed to prevent the wide installed base of Teams from continuing to condition the competition. Likewise, data portability will guarantee that chats and documents can be transferred to competing platforms without technical obstacles. The commitments concern the European economic space in the first instance, but Microsoft has decided to extend the same logic of offer and prices also globally. The case does not touch private users: here the dynamic is different, with many free products available and a lower incidence of collaborative functions.