Should Microsoft Be Excluded From EU Government Sales?

David Gerard writes "From Groklaw: Heidi Rühle, a Green Party MEP, has presented a question regarding whether or not Microsoft should be considered as having failed to fulfill the conditions to participate in public procurement procedures in Europe, as laid out in Article 93(b) and (c) of Financial Regulation — '(b) they have been convicted of an offense concerning their professional conduct by a judgment which has the force of res judicata; (c) they have been guilty of grave professional misconduct proven by any means which the contracting authority can justify' — and the Commission anti-trust penalty just happens to fulfill both of those conditions." The EU Commission is required to respond within 6 weeks to such a question from a member of Parliament.

Re:Big Problem for MSFT

[mfh]

If this happens, will it have as big of an effect on the MSFT bottom line as I hope/think?

The market in question is the size of 1/2 of the USA, and MSFT is about to lose access to that... so there is your answer! :P

Sell MSFT now while you still can...

Re:Big Problem for MSFT

[jmpeax]

how much would the necessary bribe be, and who is corrupt enough in the EU Commission to push this through for MSFT?

Why would Microsoft want to push it through? The issue is about "whether Microsoft can be excluded in the future from all advertisements of public jobs".

That's bad for Microsoft.

Re:Big Problem for MSFT

[neongrau]

1/2 the size regarding landmass. i'm pretty sure the true (software) market size of the EU is larger when compared to the US.

Re:Big Problem for MSFT

[sashapup]

Yup, about 63% larger.

US Population: 301,139,947
EU Population: 490,426,060

Re:I wonder who Heidi Rühle's campaign

[Sique]

Differently than in the U.S. most EU parlamentarians don't have an individual mandate, but are sent to the parliament by their party, which has to win the necessary seats in the parliament in the elections (so called list mandates).

So, Heidi Ruehle (if you don't have Umlauts, use 'ue' instead) doesn't have individual campaign contributors, more to the contrary, the rules of the Green Party demand a strict differentiation between "being in office" and "having a mandate".

Re:I wonder who Heidi Rühle's campaign

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you miss the point of the Green party. Their goals have always been about forcing governments and companies alike to recognise social justice, whether environmental, economic or otherwise. True their foundations were the environment, but that was one of the greatest social injustices of the time (and unfortunately it still is to a large extent).

Re:Uh, no

[s0litaire]

they are not talking of banning ALL Microsoft products! They are talking about barring Microsoft from Future tenders. The current contracts will be fulfilled, just no new ones will be accepted. Which I think is a good thing. It would provide a slow change over from Closed source OS to an Open source OS. As for the "Green" Aspect: how much of the worlds carabon foot print is caused by Tech support running around trying to Fix Windows BSoD's? and general buggines?

Re:Ummm, yeah...

[PinkyDead]

I would imagine that the exclusion would follow standard public procurement procedures within the EU, whereby Microsoft would be excluded from applying for public tenders because they weren't compliant with existing regulations.

Where they are already in place, they would not need to apply for tenders. If new departments etc came into existence, then they could use other presentation software and would have budgets for training etc.

So basically Microsoft wouldn't be able to grow their existing base, until they sorted out their compliance. But current users of their software would be unaffected.

Re:Is it just me?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're missing the point. Being a monopoly isn't necessarily a bad thing. Abusing a monopoly, however, is a BAD thing and also illegal. Microsoft could have quite happily played along with the law and been a monopoly, but they chose to disregard the law and abuse their advantage in one market to gain advantages in other markets.

Re:EU is picking winners: Why.

[CarpetShark]

I'd say we all win when a strong message is sent to large corporations that says "we will not tolerate illegal behavior from you, and we will stand by this principle even if this means we must make some sacrifices". It's called having a spine.

Well said. I mean, come on... public money vs. convicted criminal organisation... it doesn't take a lot of ethics to work out that Microsoft products shouldn't be bought by our governments.

Re:Big Problem for MSFT

[richlv]

actually, this is simply following their own procedures. if you have a law regarding procurements that states in what cases a company can not participate, you sort of are expected to follow it. mostly.
in this case the question would be whether a single company should be awarded an exception.

Re:Big Problem for MSFT

[jabuzz]

Since when has 17.6 trillion USD been practically equal to 13.8 trillion USD? That is IMF estimated EU for 2008, and actual USA for 2007, but the IMF are predicting a mild recession in 2008 for the USA so that 13.8 is not going to improve. I believe Eurozone is a bit smaller, but that is mostly because the UK is not in the Euro, and we are the second largest economy in Europe after Germany.

Re:Wrong question

[CowboyBob500]

They're not suggesting that they can't carry on using existing software (ie. migrating away from MS), merely that they can't buy NEW software from MS.

Bob

Re:That would just about scuttle the Airbus tanker

[meringuoid]

but when you start losing jobs in Ottawa, Paris, London and Berlin because of a foolish trade war, then, would you at least miss Bush for his stance on free trade?

This is the same Bush who imposed crippling tariffs on European steel firms to protect American firms? And who suddenly saw the importance of free trade once the EU imposed sanctions on the products of several swing states just before the election?

Re:I wonder who Heidi Rühle's campaign

[Corporate Troll]

at least last time I checked you were not supposed to put any accents then

And you'd be wrong.... I thought this too, up until I talked about it with a real Frenchman. This rule had been introduced in the times of the typewriter where it wasn't possible to make uppercase accentuated letters. The académie française changed that later because nobody uses typewriters anymore and computers can actually do it. You're now supposed to use accents, even in the uppercase form.

Re:Big Problem for MSFT

[BokLM]

Microsoft has been punished already. Time to move on.

Not true, it has NOT been punished, because it didn't do yet what it has been asked to.

Re:Big Problem for MSFT

[ratzetob]

Leftists such as this green party are taking it as an easy ideological shot against big companies (they hate them). I don't support that.

In Germany the green party is regarded more and more as a part of the establishment, surveys show that most of the people voting for them got a quite high average income. If you put them in a corner together with the classical anticapitalistic left movement and explain this with hate against companies you are certainly far off.

Re:Big Problem for MSFT

[Archtech]

"If the EU was so righteous, they wouldn't be doing business with China."

That's downright funny, coming from a citizen of a nation that owes $9 trillion - much of it to China. Who do you think is financing the current round of wars? It isn't US taxpayers, that's for sure.