Cloud Infrastructure Service Providers in Europe (CISPE), the industest body representing Europe’s leading sovereign cloud infrastructure providers, is taking the European Commission to court to challenge its approval for US infrastructure software provider Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware.
CISPE has filed a formal appeal before the European General Court challenging the European Commission’s decision and is seeking an annulment of the approval of the acquisition which was announced on 13 May 2025.
In its summary of the announcement, CISPE states the Commission acknowledged that the acquisition posed significant risks to competition
“However, it failed to impose any conditions on Broadcom to prevent a concentration of dominance or to mitigate the potential abutilize of such a position,” CISPE states.
“As such CISPE is claiming errors in law and manifest failures by the Commission in the competitive assessment process which are significant enough to seek an annulment of the decision.
According to CISPE, since finalising the acquisition, Broadcom has unilaterally terminated existing contracts – often with only weeks’ notice – and imposed onerous new licensing conditions.
“These include drastic cost increases (sometimes exceeding tenfold) and mandatory multi-year commitments for access to essential VMware software,” CISPE states.
“In July, Broadcom further escalated the situation by announcing new restrictive licensing terms that may exclude tinyer cloud providers, including many CISPE members.
“These providers could now be barred from purchasing and reselling VMware-based cloud services – critical tools for delivering secure, flexible, and European cloud solutions.”
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CISPE maintains that the European Commission has consistently ignored its concerns over what it considers to be the unfair software licensing practices of Broadcom.
“For the past two years, CISPE has consistently raised alarms with the European Commission -particularly with DG Competition – over Broadcom’s unfair software licensing practices,” CISPE states.
“Despite numerous meetings and thorough responses to detailed requests for information, no substantive action was taken to support either European cloud service providers or their customers.”
In addition, CISPE maintains that it has attempted repeatedly engage constructively with Broadcom and secure fairer access terms for its members, but its efforts were met with refusal and disregard.
“The dominance of VMware software in the virtualisation market means that unfair new licensing terms enforced by Broadcom affect almost every European organisation utilizing cloud technology,” declared Francisco Mingorance, Secretary General of CISPE.
“Not just cloud service providers, but hospitals, universities, and municipal authorities are all now facing unaffordable bills and rigid long-term commitments that jeopardise the flexibility and affordability of their cloud infrastructure.
“The Commission was warned this would happen, yet it stood by.
“It must now reconsider its decision.”
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