EU imposes million dollar fine on chipmaker Intel Microsoft’s $69 billion Activision Blizzard purchase about to go home

The European Commission has imposed a fine of approximately 376.4 million euros on chip giant Intel in a long-standing competition dispute. This decision with the newly determined amount was necessary because the EU court annulled a fine of 1.06 billion euros at the beginning of last year.

This was evident from a communication from the European Commission on Friday. The European Commission is taking action against this decision. The company was accused of trying to illegally force competitors out of the market for certain processors.

Long-standing dispute

In concrete terms, the one million dollar fine that has now been announced concerns the part of the charges that the EU court did not collect at the time. However, because the court could not determine what portion of the fine related to the confirmed violations, the billion dollar fine was completely overturned. The European Commission then had to determine a new level of punishment, which has now happened.

The dispute has been dragging on for some time. In May 2009, the European Commission imposed a historically high fine of over one billion euros. The competition authorities had punished Intel for the alleged abuse of a dominant market position.

According to the committee, between 2002 and 2007 the company used discounts, among other things, to convince computer manufacturers to buy the company’s chips instead of processors from competitor AMD.

(dsc/sda/awp/dpa)