The software giant could face ongoing fines of 2m euros ($2.5m) per day, backdated to December 15 last year, until it satisfies the Commission it has reached full compliance.
The Associated Press and Reuters both reported, citing anonymous sources, that the EC had carried out the first of two consultations necessary for it to impose the fines.
After the second regulatory consultation, the Commission would be able to start fining the company for failure to provide interoperability documentation up to the expected standard.
Microsoft was told at the end of the European investigation into its business practices in 2004 that it needed to document the technologies required for its competitors to interoperate with its operating systems.
It has done so, but not up to the standard required by computer scientist Neil Barrett, who was appointed Trustee to oversee Microsoft’s compliance with the EC directives.
Barrett said in December that the documentation is totally unfit at this stage for its intended purpose, and the EC has been threatening fines ever since.
Microsoft has been throwing resources at fixing this problem since then, and claims to have about 300 people working on revising 12,000 pages of documentation to a July 18 deadline.
This may be too late, however. The Financial Times recently reported that the EC was planning to impose the fines starting July 12.
