Brussels – May 16, 2025 — The European Commission is inviting feedback on a set of commitments proposed by Microsoft to resolve concerns over potentially anticompetitive practices involving its Teams communication platform.
The commitments are aimed at addressing allegations that Microsoft illegally bundled Teams with its Office 365 and Microsoft 365 productivity suites — a move the Commission says may have given Teams an unfair advantage in the market for workplace communication and collaboration tools.
Under the proposed remedies, Microsoft has pledged to:
- Offer versions of Office 365 and Microsoft 365 without Teams at a lower price within the European Economic Area (EEA),
- Allow customers to switch to these alternative versions, even under existing contracts,
- Improve interoperability between Teams’ rivals and Microsoft’s key products,
- Let customers extract and migrate their Teams data to competing services.
The European Commission’s formal investigation, launched in July 2023, followed complaints by Slack Technologies (now owned by Salesforce) and German video platform alfaview. The Commission’s preliminary findings concluded that Microsoft had abused its dominant position in the market for software-as-a-service (SaaS) productivity tools by tying Teams to its office suites since 2019.
Regulators say this bundling strategy limited competition and made it harder for rival products to integrate with Microsoft’s ecosystem. Although Microsoft has since modified how it distributes Teams, the Commission found the changes insufficient to restore market balance.
If approved, the commitments would be legally binding on Microsoft for up to ten years, with oversight by an independent monitoring trustee. They would not imply an admission of guilt or a finding of wrongdoing under EU antitrust rules.
Interested parties have one month from the publication of the commitments in the EU’s Official Journal to submit feedback as part of the Commission’s market test. A final decision will depend on whether the feedback confirms the proposed remedies adequately address competition concerns.
The full text of Microsoft’s commitments and further details can be found on the Commission’s competition website under case numbers AT.40721 and AT.40873.
Source: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_25_1233
