200 million fine for Amazon and Apple: here’s why

The Antitrust has fined Amazon and Apple for a total of over 200 million euros for having put in place a restrictive agreement that did not allow all legitimate resellers of ‘genuine’ Apple and Beats products to operate on the amazon.it marketplace. This is what the Authority itself announces. The Antitrust investigation made it possible to ascertain that certain contractual clauses of an agreement signed on October 31, 2018 – which prohibited official and unofficial resellers of Apple and Beats products from using Amazon.it, allowing the sale of Apple products and Beats in this marketplace only to Amazon and to certain individuals chosen individually and in a discriminatory way – they violate art. 101 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. In fact, in the investigation, explains the note, the desire to introduce a purely quantitative restriction on the number of retailers was established, allowing only Amazon and certain subjects, identified in a discriminatory way, to operate on Amazon.co.uk. The terms of the agreement also restricted cross-border sales, as retailers were discriminated against on a geographic basis. The restrictions of the agreement affected the level of discounts offered by third parties on Amazon.it, decreasing their size. The restrictiveness of such conduct appears to be confirmed by the fact that Amazon.it represents the place of electronic commerce where at least 70% of purchases of consumer electronics products in Italy are made. The Authority therefore imposed a fine of 68.7 million of euros to the companies of the Amazon group and a sanction of 134.5 million euros to the companies of the Apple group and has ordered these companies to end the restrictions, allowing access to Amazon.it for Apple and Beats product resellers ” genuini “in a non-discriminatory manner. The Antitrust Authority indicates that” it is essential that the application of competition rules ensure a level playing field for all retailers who use marketplaces as an increasingly important place for carrying out their commercial activity, especially in today’s context, avoiding the creation of discriminatory behaviors that restrict competition “. This is what the Authority observes regarding the investigation of the companies of the Apple Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. groups In this perspective, the Authority’s decision recognizes, in line with the jurisprudence of the EU Court of Justice, the need for distribution systems, in order to be compatible with competition rules, to be based on criteria of a qualitative nature, non-discriminatory and applied without distinction to all potential resellers. action and, thanks to his intervention and collaboration, the national competition authorities of Germany and Spain subsequently initiated similar proceedings.