The EU can take any company to court for anti competitive practises. This is what it did with Microsoft, the US Department of Justice did exactly the same a few years ago.
It benefits the consumer because it stops a company in a dominant position from taking advantage of their position. In this case it wasn't
just about MS having Internet Explorer bundled with Windows, it was about them penalizing PC vendors when they bundled other browsers as well. For instance MegaPCBuilder might suddenly find they have to pay twice as much for a Windows license because they have taken the decision to install Netscape on all their desktops as well as IE (yes, the case does go back that far).
Same goes for media players. MS were putting pressure on vendors for including Quicktime and RealPlayer on their systems.
I guess large amounts of the public are not equipped to understand these issues
(that last bit really isn't meant as a serious dig

)