The world’s largest online retailer, Amazon, is violating antitrust regulations, according to the EU competition watchdog. The European Commission in charge announced today that the company is being accused of systematically using non-public business data from independent retailers for its own retail business.
According to the authority, Amazon now has the opportunity to comment on the objections. If the competition watchdogs then stick to their assessment, Amazon could face a billion-dollar penalty.
If companies violate EU competition rules, they risk fines of up to ten percent of their annual global sales. Amazon’s revenue in 2019 was around $ 280.5 billion.
Investigation identifies disadvantages for other sellers
The EU’s competition watchdogs launched an investigation into potentially illegal business practices in July 2019. Above all, they are looking into the question of whether the group is unfairly competing with other retailers to whom it makes its platform available.
Regarding the objections, the EU Commission now writes that the results of the investigation show that the employees of the Amazon retail business have very large amounts of non-public seller data at their disposal.
These flowed directly into the automated systems of the business, where they would be aggregated and used to balance end customer offers and strategic business decisions from Amazon. This is to the detriment of the other sellers on the marketplace.
Amazon could, for example, concentrate its offers on those products in a category that sold best and adapt its offers on the basis of non-public data from competing sellers.
