According to Politico, Microsoft will pay a group operating in the cloud industry to investigate a complaint regarding violations of EU antitrust law

(Reuters) – Microsoft is close to reaching a multimillion-dollar deal with the Amazon-backed cloud lobby to drop an antitrust complaint with the European Commission, Politico reported on Saturday.

The deal, which has not yet been approved by members of lobbying group Cloud Infrastructure Services Providers in Europe (CISPE), would result in providers withdrawing their inquiry request into Microsoft’s cloud licensing deals, the report said, citing knowledgeable industry officials. proposals.

According to the report, the pact would include a possible payment of millions of euros to the industry association, but could also make separate payments to individual companies.

Microsoft, Amazon, CISPE and the European Commission did not immediately respond to requests for comment outside regular business hours.

CISPE, whose members include Amazon and 26 small cloud providers in the EU, filed a complaint in late 2022, maintaining that Microsoft’s new contract terms imposed on October 1 harm the European cloud computing ecosystem.

As part of the settlement, CISPE and its members will also agree not to file legal complaints against Microsoft in any country in the world, according to the report.

Reuters first reported in February that Microsoft was in talks with CISPE to resolve a European Union antitrust complaint over the software giant’s cloud licensing practices.

(Reporting by Utkarsh Shetti and Gursimran Kaur in Bengaluru; Editing by Shri Navaratnam and Tom Hogue)