Responding to Brad Smith’s announcement at the Bruegel event, CISPE Secretary General, Francisco Mingorance said:

“We cannot rely on the goodwill or even the charity of any gatekeeper. Microsoft must abide by the law including competition law. It must make concrete changes to its licensing practices and these changes must be auditable by independent 3rd parties.

“Microsoft has acknowledged that some of its licensing practices are harmful and unfair – now it must act swiftly to bring these to an end. The Initiative announced today fails to tackle in any meaningful way the unfair licensing practices at the heart of complaints and concerns among cloud infrastructure service providers and customers across Europe. It does nothing to end the anti-competitive tying of productivity suites with cloud infrastructure services. The Commission must continue its investigation for the sake of European cloud customers.”