Broadcom escalated its dispute with European Union (EU) antitrust regulators in ​a case related to its VMware partner ecosystem.

Reuters reported the chip giant filed a case in the Luxembourg-based General Court over requests for documents containing legal advice from its U.S. lawyers. Broadcom commented that the filing was a ​procedural action “solely to protect its rights under the long-recognized rules ​on legal professional privilege in non-EU countries, including the U.S."

"As a U.S.-headquartered company with global operations, ​Broadcom regards legal professional privilege as a fundamental right that must be protected, and our action is narrowly tailored to address only this interest," Broadcom explained in an email, noting that it is otherwise cooperating with the European Commission’s (EC) requests for information.

In the EU, attorney-client privilege – a legal principle that protects confidential communications made for the purpose of seeking or providing legal advice – generally applies only to exchanges between a company and its external legal counsel, excluding in-house lawyers.

The EC, serving as the EU’s competition authority, told Reuters it is prepared to defend all its decisions in court.

The Cloud Infrastructure Service Providers in Europe (CISPE) filed a competition complaint against Broadcom in March over ongoing VMware objections, specifically its shuttering of the Advantage Partner Program for VMware Cloud Service Providers (VCSP). Partners on the program were told Broadcom would not be renewing their contracts in favor of an invite-only system, while the firm retired its White Label model for Europe, which was set up to allow smaller cloud service providers (CSPs) to work through Pinnacle or Premier partners.

Hundreds of CSPs were reportedly affected by the decision, leading CISPE to call for both VCSP’s termination to be suspended and the White Label model to be reinstated, as well as “explicit protections against retaliation from Broadcom” with enforced fines to ensure compliance with its terms.

CISPE also accused Broadcom of “destroying European strategic autonomy and increasing dominance on overseas providers.” As explored in SDxCentral’s Sovereignty Supplement, digital sovereignty is a hot topic on the continent, with insiders warning that dependency on U.S. hyperscalers has become dangerously concentrated and fragile, advising organizations to view sovereignty as a means to ensure resiliency.

Elsewhere, analyst leaders like Gartner pinned their flag to the mast by claiming only the U.S. and China can have a completely sovereign cloud, with other nations unable to escape foreign influence in their cloud systems, especially those in Europe.

CISPE has previously taken Microsoft to task, claiming the U.S. cloud giant unfairly tied customers to its Azure cloud services.

Microsoft eventually struck a deal to allow CISPE members to offer pay-as-you-go licenses to platforms like Windows Server and SQL Server, and support hosting Microsoft workloads on Europe-based infrastructure without requiring customer data to be shared with the hyperscaler.