EU's Ribera says Microsoft has committed to abide by European rules

By Pietro Lombardi

BARCELONA (Reuters) -Microsoft Chairman Brad Smith has told the European Commission his company will abide by European rules regardless of whether it agrees with them or not, the Commission's Vice President Teresa Ribera said on Monday.

In a chat with reporters in which she addressed issues from digital competition to trade and a massive electricity outage in Spain and Portugal last week, Ribera praised the approach.

"I think it's much more valuable to acknowledge that it's about complying with the rules if we want to operate in this market and we're going to respect them, rather than just saying 'you're targeting me because I'm American'," she said.

The Commission has seen both approaches in its meetings with different players, she added. Microsoft said last month it would sell its chat and video app Teams separately from its Office software globally, six months after it unbundled the two products in Europe in a bid to avert a possible EU antitrust fine. Salesforce-owned Slack complained to the European Commission about Microsoft's tying of Teams to Office.

"We are talking about operators that have been accumulating a significant concentration of power, and about a third of their global revenues are produced in Europe," Ribera said.

Asked about trade tensions with the United States, the executive vice president said the EU wanted to avoid a trade war but "not at any price."

(Reporting by Pietro Lombardi; Editing by Inti Landauro and Jan Harvey)

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