Brussels, 11/11/2009 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission has told the American company Oracle that it needs to make concessions in order to obtain the approval of the European competition authorities for its plans to acquire Sun Microsystems. Oracle, a software publisher specialising in database management, has already had its purchase of Sun Microsystems, also a software publisher, with a price tag of $7.4 billion, approved by the American authorities.
The Commission is not reassured about the future of free competition on the database market for businesses. An initial study is believed to have highlighted that a significant proportion of the market is currently shared between the MySQL databases (belonging to Sun) and similar Oracle products. As a result, the Commission sent a statement of objections to Oracle on Monday 9 November. The authorisation of the acquisition by the United States in no way obliges the European authorities to do the same, stressed Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes. "It was at another time, on a different market", she told the Brussels press on Wednesday 11 November. Although both companies are incorporated under American law, the European Commission is competent to make its own decision on whether or not to allow their merger, as both are significantly active in the European Economic Area. Not beating about the bush, Oracle has made it quite clear that it intends to challenge the Commission's position. "The transaction is no threat to competition, including the database market. The Commission's statement of objections reveals a profound misunderstanding of database competition and open source dynamics. It is well understood by those knowledgeable about open source software that because MySQL is open source, it cannot be controlled by anyone. That is the whole point of open source", said Oracle in a press release. (C.D./transl.fl)