Broadcom's (AVGO) acquisition of VMware will be probed by the European General Court after Cloud Infrastructure Service Providers in Europe, a trade association, filed a formal appeal challenging the European Commission's approval decision.

The commission recognized that the acquisition posed significant risks to competition but failed to impose conditions on Broadcom "to prevent a concentration of dominance or to mitigate the potential abuse of such a position," the association said.

The association accused Broadcom of terminating existing contracts and imposing "onerous" new licensing conditions, including "drastic cost increases."

"The dominance of VMware software in the virtualisation market means that unfair new licensing terms enforced by Broadcom affect almost every European organisation using cloud technology," Francisco Mingorance, the association's secretary general, said.

Broadcom did not immediately reply to a request for comment from MT Newswires.