swa66 - 3:51 pm on Jun 2, 2009 (gmt 0)

The EU Parliament has a monopoly on writing up anti-competitive legislation for the EU region as a whole. The UN should step in and force the EU to "bundle" alternate anti-trust bodies, so that member countries can pick and choose which set of anti-trust laws they want to abide by.

A few clarifications: MSFT is tangoing with the EU commission, not the EU parliament (there is quite a difference between the two).

It's not a law aiming for MSFT that's being made or that they broke, it's a ruling against existing competitive rules that are made to ensure _fair_ competition.
It's utterly the opposite of an "anti-competitive legislation", it's a legislation is meant to prevent monopolies from abusing their power, that is meant to drive down prices by creating more competition.
This is legislation that a.o. also targets former state owned companies (like the incumbent telcos, railroads etc.) and forces them (and their government owners) to get by without state sponsorship and to actually compete. They never competed with anybody, not even among themselves. They had a monopoly and in many cases this monopoly was even by (state) law.
So the commission takes on these state monopolies and twists their arm till they properly compete, even against the will of some local politicians (who then run to the press and start to whine giving the EU a bad name).
The member states of the EU have all a veto right to any law they do not want to see passed in the EU parliament (unfortunately). We're stuck with that unanimous requirement, so very few proposals make it, and those that do make it all do have that unanimous support, so why would a member state ever seek things elsewhere as they had a simple veto right they could have exercised had they chosen to do so.

The bad name the EU has in many states is due to the local politicians playing their game and the press playing along:
- if it's perceived as good, the member states have to implement the EU directive into local law and they take credit for themselves, forgetting to point out the EU forced them to do this. And taking all credit for themselves.
- If it's perceived as bad by the general population, the politicians all hide behind "the EU makes us do this" -remember this is per definition wrong: they chose to go for it by allowing a unanimous decision- in the first place.

As far as Microsoft goes: they are a monopoly, they routinely break the rules and they are finding out their lobbying isn't paying off.
The rules were clear enough, but they chose this path themselves, they'll feel justice in the end. They need to figure out they are out of their league with the commission.