Europe Approves Microsoft Purchase of Skype

The European Commission approved Microsoft’s $8.5 billion purchase of Skype, saying it had no objections to a deal that would link the world’s largest software maker with the leading Internet communications service.

While the assent from the European competition commissioner, Joaquín Almunia, is not the final antitrust hurdle for the transaction — regulators in Russia, Ukraine, Serbia and Taiwan are still deliberating — the positive review from Brussels was considered the last significant threat to what would be Microsoft’s largest takeover to date. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission approved the transaction in June. In voicing no objections to the deal, Mr. Almunia, a Spanish economist, chose not to act on a complaint from an Italian competitor to Skype, Messagenet of Milan, which had asked that the deal be blocked unless Microsoft opened Skype’s 124-million user network to competitors.