The European Commission accused Amazon for having violated competition laws in France and Germany, taking advantage of its dual role as a platform, where third-party retailers can sell products, and that of a product reseller in turn. The accusation comes after more than a year of investigation by the Commission, which announced that it has also opened a second investigation into a possible preferential treatment that Amazon would reserve for retailers who use its logistics services.
According to the Commission, Amazon systematically used the private data of the retailers who sell on its platform to favor its own products to the detriment of others. Margrethe Vestager, European Commissioner for Competition, said that “we must ensure that platforms with a dual role with market power, such as Amazon, do not distort competition. Third-party vendor business data should not be used to Amazon’s advantage when acting as a competitor to these vendors. ‘
We reached the preliminary conclusion that @amazon illegally has abused its dominant position as a marketplace service provider in DE & FR. @amazon may have used sensitive data big scale to compete against smaller retailers. Now for @amazon to respond. @EU_Competition
– Margrethe Vestager (@vestager) November 10, 2020
Amazon commented on the Commission’s decision saying it disagrees with the allegations and claiming to represent “less than 1% of the global retail market”. The company also said that “no company has been more involved with small businesses than Amazon or has done more to support them in the past two decades. There are more than 150,000 European companies that sell through our stores, which generate tens of billions of euros in revenues every year and have created hundreds of thousands of jobs ».
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