The European competition commissioner Mario Monti announced on Friday that he is considering merging two current enquiries into Microsoft and its alleged abuse of its dominant position in the operating system market. A hearing will be fixed for the present investigations at which Microsoft will make its defences.

The first enquiry is looking at allegations that Microsoft is using its dominant position in the PC operating system market to gain dominance of the server market; the other is based on a complaint lodged by Sun Microsystems that Microsoft is competing unfairly by refusing to give Sun interoperability information for Windows 2000.

Microsoft submitted to the Commission 9,000 pages of evidence on the cases last November. Mr Monti said he is now close to completing his evaluation of it, adding, “At this stage, in spite of Microsoft’s claim that what they do is to the benefit of consumers and innovation, I am not sure that their concept of interoperability and their market behaviour ensure a competitive scenario.”

We are processing your request. \n Thank you for your patience. An error occurred. This could be due to inactivity on the page - please try again.