EC's role is to protect European culture and jobs. At the time Microsoft owned Nokia had huge design centres and even still made some phones in Europe, Intel made (and still makes) most processors for European market at Leixlip and AMD made (but has stopped now) their CPUs in Dresden.And no it wouldn't have violated EU anti-trust laws as the only person who can enforce them was the commissionaire involved.
Does that not seem dubious at best to you? Mandating a single source, for profit provider and paying them from general taxation to maintain their de facto monopoly?
But we're getting further off topic...
Plenty of other precedents of course - the 2G and 3G standards for Europe banned any American, i.e. Qualcomm, IP. Airbus still receives huge grants and favourable taxation, all cars sold in the EU have to have the Bosch connector and pass all access codes to them, for a long time only one approved supplier of seatbelt actuators that everyone had to use, all flying vehicles have to have a transponder made by a couple of companies in Europe, etc, etc. And right down to banning the Lightning connector of course.
But agree well off topic.
Statistics: Posted by MikeDB — Wed Nov 20, 2024 10:46 am