As regulators prepare to open a formal investigation into Broadcom, interim measures should be imposed.
The European Commission received, last week, a letter on this subject. Signatories: Cigref and three of its counterparts (in Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands), as well as CISPE, the association that represents European cloud providers.
For months now, the association has been pressing for the measures in question. They would mainly consist of:
- Freeze the suspension of the VCSP (VMware Cloud Service Partner) program in Europe and reintegrate European cloud providers into it
- Reintroduce the white-label program that had allowed smaller CSPs to offer VMware solutions
- Establish explicit protections against potential retaliation by Broadcom
More broadly, the association is seeking more reasonable commercial terms, and their retention for at least 3 years, to give participants time to adapt… or to look elsewhere.
The DMA track, quickly raised and quickly dismissed
Broadcom completed its acquisition of VMware in November 2023. With the upheavals that followed, CISPE did not hesitate to speak up. In spring 2024, it urged regulators, lawmakers, and European courts to examine the situation. Its main complaints at the time were:
- Unilateral termination of licensing agreements with only a few weeks’ notice
- Cancellation of hundreds of products without notice
- Consolidation of others into bundles that would blow up the bill without delivering functional improvements
- Ambiguity about admission conditions into the new partner programs
Arguing that Broadcom was “holding the sector hostage,” CISPE had suggested designating it as an access controller under the DMA (Digital Markets Act). It also called for a suspension of contract terminations, and for customers to be able to exit multi-year commitments once viable alternative solutions became available.
The European Commission had eventually begun collecting testimonies. Soon after the opening of this RFI (request for information), Broadcom had made a few concessions. Including the promise to continue addressing critical flaws in its perpetually licensed products.
Without mincing words about opportunism, CISPE described the changes as “minor”: they did not solve the problems previously raised. The association added another point: the billing base modification. Instead of a pay-as-you-go model based on memory usage, partners would have to commit for 3 years to a forecasted CPU core capacity.
An observatory with blunt conclusions
In November 2024, CISPE established an observatory charged with scrutinizing competition in Europe’s cloud market. Its primary remit was to supervise Microsoft’s commitments, but Broadcom was included within its scope as well.
Its first report, published in February 2025, was blunt: no prospects of negotiation with Broadcom. By then, proceedings had been launched in commercial courts, notably in France (Orange, Thales). They generally aimed to preserve previous licensing terms… while awaiting negotiation of new, “fairer” terms. Or to obtain a delay to migrate to alternative solutions.
The observatory noted Broadcom’s “drip-feed” tactics in these disputes, designed to delay substantive decisions. In most cases, CISPE added, the parties had not dared to go to court for fear of reprisals. And the pressure did not stop at VMware licenses — it extended, notably, to mainframe software.
Partner programs, gradually folded into the grievances
The second report, in May 2025, was not any rosier. The burden of charges grew heavier. Among other things, because recently, VMware’s partner CSPs had to choose between service-provider and reseller statuses, as a result of changes to incentive structures.
CISPE acknowledged that since the first report, the majority of its members had signed new licensing agreements. But the association argued that they had largely been forced to comply, lacking sufficient notice.
For most use cases, there is no functionally equivalent alternative, CISPE noted. As for those closest to it, they would require moving workloads to American hyperscalers… with the risk of prices rising even further.
In this context, Broadcom was asked for:
- At least six months’ notice for any changes to contractual terms or pricing structures
- Contractual negotiation of charges during peak usage, and no penalties for CSPs in cases of over- or under-utilization
- Flexible licensing options enabling volume-based reductions
- Easier access to top-tier partnerships for smaller CSPs
- The possibility of being both a reseller and a service provider
A recours to the EU General Court…
In July 2025, CISPE filed a case with the EU General Court. Objective: to annul the decision by which Brussels had authorized the Broadcom–VMware acquisition.
According to CISPE, the European Commission had omitted to assess the risk of Broadcom’s strengthened position in virtualization software, despite a wealth of evidentiary material. Its assessment had indeed focused on conglomerate effects related to Broadcom’s hardware products (Fibre Channel host bus controllers and storage adapters) and on the risk of excluding the main competitor, namely Marvell.
… and complaints to the European Ombudsman…
The observatory’s third report, published in October 2025, noted that Broadcom had formalized a revamp of its VCSP program, without clarifying whether it would apply in Europe. Customers would no longer be able, from November 1, to port their existing licenses to another CSP. Meanwhile, cloud providers not in the program would no longer be able to host VMware solutions — they would only be able to resell licenses. For those in the program, the opposite would apply. The bottom line: participants would effectively have to choose between the roles of reseller and service provider, even if they held contracts on both fronts.
Then CISPE denounced the rigidity around the start and end dates of VMware licenses. It also highlighted the end of the model allowing CSPs to leverage additional cores later billed in arrears.
At the end of 2025, with the European Commission defending its decision to approve the Broadcom–VMware merger, CISPE pressed again. It argued that the deal’s financing structure and the growth commitments tied to it should have warned Brussels. Hock Tan had indeed pledged to boost VMware’s EBITDA by 60 to 80% within three years… in a market growing at less than 10% annually.
In parallel, the association filed a complaint with the European Ombudsman. The motive: Brussels took far too long (672 days) to publish its decision, which could only be challenged from that point onward.
… and with the Directorate-General for Competition
A further complaint followed in March 2026, this time to the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Competition. Broadcom had then confirmed the end of VCSP in Europe. It is in this framework that CISPE demanded the interim measures cited above.
Since then, the association has denounced the “very troubling” conduct of the American group toward the EU General Court. It allegedly instructed the Court not to disclose certain of its correspondences… and to reveal those from CISPE members that contained confidential information.
Broadcom has also faced attacks on sovereignty grounds. CISPE argues the framework it developed and contends that VCF does not meet its criteria, including at the most fundamental level. First, because it is a proprietary stack originating from a vendor exposed, among other things, to the CLOUD Act and export restrictions dictated by Washington. But also because Broadcom maintains unilateral control as the sole source of fixes, updates, and maintenance. CISPE also points to a compliance-reporting mechanism it likens to a “kill switch,” in the sense that non-compliance can lead to degradation or blocking of the control framework.
