Published by Global Banking & Finance Review®
Posted on May 5, 2025
2 min readLast updated: January 24, 2026
Add as preferred source on GoogleMicrosoft's Brad Smith confirms the company's commitment to EU rules, ensuring compliance even in disagreement, as part of its strategy to operate in the European market.
By Pietro Lombardi
BARCELONA (Reuters) -Microsoft Chairman Brad Smith has told the European Commission his company will abide by European rules regardless of whether it agrees with them or not, the Commission's Vice President Teresa Ribera said on Monday.
In a chat with reporters where she addressed issues from digital competition to trade and to a massive electricity outage in Spain and Portugal last week, Ribera praised the approach.
"I think it's much more valuable to acknowledge that it's about complying with the rules if we want to operate in this market and we're going to respect them, rather than just saying 'you're targeting me because I'm American'," she said.
The Commission has seen both approaches in its meetings with different players, she added. Microsoft said last month it would sell its chat and video app Teams separately from its Office software globally, six months after it unbundled the two products in Europe in a bid to avert a possible EU antitrust fine. Salesforce-owned Slack complained to the European Commission about Microsoft's tying of Teams to Office.
"We are talking about operators that have been accumulating a significant concentration of power, and about a third of their global revenues are produced in Europe," Ribera said.
(Reporting by Pietro Lombardi; Editing by Inti Landauro and Jan Harvey)
The article discusses Microsoft's commitment to complying with European Union regulations as communicated by Brad Smith to the European Commission.
Microsoft is unbundling Teams from Office in Europe to avoid potential EU antitrust fines following complaints from Salesforce-owned Slack.
The EU market is significant for Microsoft, accounting for about a third of its global revenues.
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