BRUSSELS — Europe’s General Court has cut the Intel EU antitrust fine to €237 million, confirming that the U.S. chipmaker broke EU competition rules but slashing a 2023 penalty that targeted payments to computer makers to delay rival chips, in a judgment issued Dec. 10, 2025.
In its published judgment, the Luxembourg-based tribunal upheld a European Commission finding that Intel paid PC makers including HP, Acer and Lenovo between 2002 and 2006 to halt or delay computers using rival Advanced Micro Devices processors. EU competition officials treat such payments as “naked restrictions,” a serious form of abuse, but the judges trimmed the fine by about €140 million after concluding that only a limited set of products and customers were affected and that long gaps separated some of the anti-competitive conduct.
Intel EU antitrust fine trimmed but abuse finding stands
The decision means Intel lost its latest attempt to overturn the Intel EU antitrust fine but won a smaller bill after the court said a €237 million penalty better reflects the gravity and duration of the infringement, down from €376 million imposed by the Commission in 2023, according to a news report from Reuters. Both Intel and the Commission can still appeal on points of law to the EU Court of Justice, the bloc’s top court, potentially prolonging a legal saga that already spans more than a decade and a half.
The Intel EU antitrust fine has its roots in the European Commission’s landmark 2009 decision, which imposed a then-record €1.06 billion penalty on Intel for abusing its dominant position in the market for x86 microprocessors. Regulators found that Intel granted conditional rebates to major PC makers and paid so-called “naked restrictions” to discourage or block the sale of machines built with rival AMD chips.
Courts have since dismantled large parts of that original ruling. In 2022, the General Court annulled most of the Commission’s findings on rebates, and the EU Court of Justice upheld that outcome last year, as reported by The Associated Press, meaning Intel no longer owes the €1.06 billion fine. Reuters reported in January that the company received more than €515 million in default interest on top of the principal after the annulment, even as a separate €376 million penalty over “naked restrictions” was reimposed in 2023.
The latest ruling narrows the Intel EU antitrust fine to those direct payments aimed at freezing or postponing AMD-based models, underscoring that EU judges are willing to scrutinize the scale and effects of abusive conduct even when they accept the underlying theory of harm. For Brussels, the case highlights both the strength and the fragility of its antitrust toolkit: large penalties can be upheld but aggressively re-cut if courts find the evidence does not support their full amount.
For Intel, which is pushing to restore profitability while investing heavily in new chip plants and AI accelerators, the Intel EU antitrust fine is now smaller but more firmly anchored in court-tested reasoning, reducing financial uncertainty even as it keeps alive a high-profile reminder that past competition practices can shadow Big Tech for years.
