Italy’s consumer protection authority has launched a formal investigation into Microsoft over the way the company raised the price of its widely used office software subscription. The watchdog says consumers were moved onto more expensive plans without being properly told what they were paying for or given a genuine choice about whether they wanted it.
The investigation was announced on Friday the 26th of June by the Italian Competition Authority, known in Italian as AGCM. It named two Microsoft subsidiaries as subjects of the probe. These were Microsoft Ireland Operations Limited and Microsoft S.r.l., the company’s Italian arm. Both are key parts of the company’s European structure.
The investigation focuses on Microsoft 365. This is the subscription service used by hundreds of millions of people around the world to access Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and a range of other office applications. The service is used both by individuals at home and by businesses of every size.
The complaint from the Italian regulator centres on how Microsoft handled a significant change to the service. The company integrated two additional tools into Microsoft 365 without, according to the watchdog, making this sufficiently clear to customers. The tools in question are named Copilot, a writing and productivity assistant, and Designer, an image creation tool. Both were developed internally by Microsoft and represent a new direction for the company’s software products.
The regulator says consumers were automatically moved to a more expensive version of their subscription. This happened unless they took active steps to prevent it. The Italian authority says most people did not receive enough information to make an informed choice about whether they wanted the upgraded plan or whether they preferred to stay on the original terms.
The price increase was not small. For individual subscribers in Europe, the cost of a personal plan rose from around 6.99 euros a month to 9.99 euros a month. That is an increase of roughly 43 per cent. A family plan, covering up to six people, rose from 9.99 euros a month to 12.99 euros. These increases came into effect across European markets through 2025 and into 2026. Microsoft framed the change as the delivery of additional value.
The Italian watchdog did not accept that framing. It described Microsoft’s conduct as a practice that could be considered aggressive. It said the company’s approach had unduly limited the freedom of choice of Italian consumers. Those are serious findings in European consumer law. They indicate that the authority believes the company acted in a way that went beyond acceptable commercial behaviour.
Microsoft did not respond to requests for comment at the time the investigation was announced. As Reuters reported, the company has not yet publicly stated how it will respond to the probe. The broader context matters. Microsoft announced the price changes in December 2025 with new rates taking effect on the 1st of July 2026. The company said the increases were justified by more than 1,100 new features added to the service over the previous year, including expanded security tools and the integration of its productivity assistants. It argued that the value delivered had grown significantly and that the new price reflected that.
See Also: Elon Musk’s X money plan has just taken its biggest step yet toward becoming a bank
Consumer groups and regulators across Europe took a different view. The core of the complaint is not that the price rose. Prices can rise. The complaint is about how the change was communicated and how customers were treated when it happened. Moving people automatically onto a more expensive plan while giving them insufficient information to opt out is a practice that regulators across the European Union have become increasingly willing to challenge.
Italy is not the first country to look closely at Microsoft’s subscription practices. European competition authorities have also been examining whether large technology companies are using their dominant positions to impose conditions on users that would not be acceptable in a more competitive market. The European Commission separately announced this week that it was examining whether Microsoft’s cloud services should be subject to additional oversight under European digital rules.
The investigation in Italy is at an early stage. Opening a formal probe does not mean the authority has reached a finding of guilt. It means the watchdog believes there is enough substance to the concerns to justify a full examination. That examination will look at what information was provided to consumers, when it was provided and whether it met the standards required under Italian and European consumer protection law.
If the investigation concludes that Microsoft did act unfairly, the company could face financial penalties and could be required to change the way it manages subscription renewals in Italy. Broader implications across the European Union would depend on whether other national authorities chose to open their own proceedings or whether the European Commission decided to act at a European level.
For Microsoft, the timing is uncomfortable. The new prices came into force at the start of July. The Italian investigation has begun the same week.
