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EU: EC opens formal Amazon antitrust investigation

By  |  July 17, 2019

The EU’s Competition Commission has opened a formal antitrust investigation into Amazon to investigate whether the company is using sales data to gain an unfair advantage over smaller sellers on the Marketplace platform. The Commission stated it will look into Amazon’s agreements with marketplace sellers, as well as how Amazon uses data to choose which retailer to link to using the “Buy Box” on its site.

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    The announcement came on the same day that Amazon announced changes to its third-party seller service agreement in response to a separate antitrust investigation by German regulators.

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    “E-commerce has boosted retail competition and brought more choice and better prices,” said the EU’s Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager. “We need to ensure that large online platforms don’t eliminate these benefits through anti-competitive behavior. I have therefore decided to take a very close look at Amazon’s business practices and its dual role as marketplace and retailer, to assess its compliance with EU competition rules.”

    Full Content: Europa, Washington Post

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