The details of the proposed sanctions remain confidential. A further meeting of Member State representatives is set for Monday, to approve an appropriate level of fine in addition to the sanctions. It is expected that the draft decision will then go before the Commission for formal adoption on 24th March.
On Tuesday, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Chief Counsel Brad Smith met with Monti in Brussels. According to Reuters, the meeting was a final attempt to reach a settlement and avoid a formal finding against the company – albeit neither side disclosed any details of the meeting.
Background
The Commission has been investigating Microsoft since 1998, when competitors accused the company of failing to disclose hardware specifications necessary to integrate non-Microsoft software into corporate networks.
The long-running investigation began drawing to a close in August last year, when the Commission issued a preliminary finding that Microsoft's practices in Europe were anti-competitive.
At that time, Tilman Lueder, a spokesman for the Commission said: "We are minded to impose a fine for the past and minded to impose remedies for the future, and we will adopt a final decision which does exactly that."
The Commission then gave the company a final chance to make its case.
Microsoft filed these arguments in November. The bulk of its defence fought against allegations that it is leveraging its dominant position from the PC into low-end servers and that Microsoft's tying of Windows Media Player to the Windows PC operating system is anti-competitive.
The Commission's draft ruling has been circulating Commission offices over the past few months, and reports suggest that a fine will be imposed and the Windows Media Player will be untied from Windows. This means that Microsoft would be required to offer its European customers a version of Windows without Windows Media Player.
The ruling is also likely to require Microsoft to reveal more source code, to allow rivals such as Sun Microsystems to achieve full interoperability with Windows PCs and servers, and thereby – at least in theory – compete on a level playing field.
Any ruling issued by the Commission will not necessarily be of immediate effect, because it could be appealed by Microsoft to the European Court of Justice. Such cases can take three or four years to go through the court process.