Microsoft to be banned from EU contracts ?
Will Microsoft be banned from future EU contracts ? That's the question of Heide Rühle, a member of the European Parliament is asking the European Commission. According to European Law candidates shall be "excluded from participation in procurement procedures if they have been convicted of an offense concerning their professional conduct by a judgment which has the force of res judicata or if they have been guilty of grave professional misconduct proven by any means which the contracting authority can justify."
"Considering that Microsoft continued to abuse its powerful market position after the Commission's March 2004 decision requiring it to change its practices, and given the fact that it is already the third time in four years that the Commission had to impose fines or penalty payment for non-compliance with a Commission decision, and bearing in mind that the 17 September 2007 CFI judgment has the force of res judicata, does the Commission consider that Article 93 (b) and (c) of Financial Regulation, read in conjunction with article 45(2) of Directive 2004/18/EC could be applied to Microsoft in this particular case and with regard to any ongoing or future public procurement procedure? If it is the case, could we therefore consider that Microsoft does not fulfill the conditions to participate in such public
procurement procedure?"
The last two paragraphs have been directly taken from the form that was submitted to the European Commission, the pdf can be downloaded from this link. It will be very interesting to read the answer of the European Commission. My guess is that Microsoft will not be excluded from receiving EU contracts because if they would it would be like a digital revolution in Europe and a huge chance for Linux on the other hand.
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Europeans believe in fair trade. M$ believes in a monopoly. So conflicts between the two are no surprise.
Open source instead of M$ would be a good thing and would definetly stimulate innovations.
By the way, what’s so special about Linux on a laptop producing PDF-files ?
i was wondering what ms ruhle is using as an OS for her laptop ?
since the decision was printed in PDF, i would venture a guess that it is on a windows based system.
Those wacky Europeans. Can you believe them? First they treat Microsoft as their personal ATM now this. Why don’t they just post a sign at every Euro border, “No American corporations need compete within.”
My suggestion to Microsoft is to cease any and all support and updates to any EU body.
It seems that Europe is intent on conquering with closed trade and unfair competition what they couldn’t with centuries of bloody butchery.
As an English born hi-tech professional working in Israel I see this kind of Eurocentric behavior all the time and frankly it sickens me. The ugly American has been replaced with the ugly European.
Let’s be realistic, when you enter the field of hi-tech in any field you know that big companies such as Microsoft, Google, Oracle, SAP and others are going to be right there competing. The fact is that the only people losing out by these attacks on Microsoft are European users and the potentially employable Europeans that Microsoft would hire to develop and support technology in Europe. So is the EU really representing their citizens best interests?
Europe does not believe in a free market, they believe in allow unfair advantage to European companies to prop up the misguided notion that they are any kind of power in the world today.
Maybe it will level the playing field a bit to keep cutting edge development out of Europe until they open their borders and minds a little.