The encyclopedia · Legal & Compliance · Legal decision · 2002–2025
Intel's €1.06B EU fine collapsed — then came back at a fraction of the size
The EU fined Intel €1.06B for abusing dominance in x86 chips; appeals shrank it to €237M.
Intel · 2009-05-13
What happened
On 13 May 2009, the European Commission fined Intel €1.06 billion for abusing its dominant position in the market for x86 central processing units. The Commission found two practices: conditional rebates to computer makers that punished them for buying from rival AMD, and 'naked restrictions' — payments to HP, Acer and Lenovo to halt or delay products fitted with AMD chips between November 2002 and December 2006.
Intel appealed, and the case produced a long legal back-and-forth. In 2014 the General Court dismissed Intel's appeal, but in 2017 the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) referred the case back because the General Court had not properly examined the rebates.
On 26 January 2022, the General Court annulled the Commission's finding on the conditional rebates and, unable to isolate the amount attributable to the naked restrictions alone, annulled the entire €1.06 billion fine. The Commission then re-imposed a smaller penalty on 22 September 2023 of €376.36 million, covering only the naked-restriction payments.
The saga continued to the General Court, which on 10 December 2025 upheld the Commission's finding but reduced the fine further, to €237,105,540. A penalty that began at just over a billion euros ultimately settled at under a quarter of that figure.
Why it happened
- Intel paid computer makers to stall AMD-based products, treating exclusionary deals as a cheaper way to protect its chip monopoly than competing on merit.
- It built the scheme without a workable legal defence, then spent fifteen years fighting a fine whose factual foundation kept shifting on appeal.
The lesson
A bill is only as strong as the blocks it is built from — when one part of a finding fails, the whole penalty can be reworked and shrunk.
Aftermath
The 2025 ruling left the Commission with a smaller but still substantial fine, and the case became a textbook example of how long EU competition appeals can run. For Intel, the outcome was a partial victory: the record fine was cut by more than three-quarters, but the underlying finding that it had paid rivals' customers to stall AMD products ultimately stood. For the Commission, it highlighted the risk of bundling contested theories of harm into a single, easily-discarded penalty.
Sources
- Antitrust: Commission re-imposes fine on Intel for abusing its dominant position in x86 CPUs — European Commission
- The Court of Justice reduces the fine imposed on Intel to €237,105,540 — Court of Justice of the European Union
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