Antitrust fines Amazon for over 1 billion

The Italian Antitrust Authority has imposed a fine of over 1 billion euros (1,128,596,156.33) on the companies Amazon Europe Core, Amazon Services Europe, Amazon, Amazon Italia Services and Amazon Italia Logistica for violation of art. . 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. Amazon holds a position of absolute dominance in the Italian marketplace brokerage services market, which has allowed it to promote its own logistics service, called Fulfillment by Amazon, so-called “FBA”, among the sellers active on the platform. Amazon.co.uk to the detriment of competing operators in this market and to strengthen its dominant position. According to the Authority, the companies have linked the use of the FBA service to access a set of essential benefits to obtain visibility and better sales prospects on Amazon.it. Among these exclusive benefits, the Prime label stands out, which makes it easier to sell to the most loyal and high-spending consumers who are members of Amazon’s loyalty program of the same name. The Prime label also allows you to participate in the famous special events managed by Amazon, such as Black Friday, Cyber ​​Monday, Prime Day and increases the likelihood that the seller’s offer is selected as a Featured Offer and displayed in the so-called Buy Box. Amazon has thus prevented third-party sellers from associating the Prime label with offers not managed with FBA. The investigation has ascertained that these are functions of the Amazon.it platform that are crucial for the success of sellers and for increasing their sales. Finally, the stringent performance measurement system to which Amazon subjects non-FBA sellers is not applied to third-party sellers who use FBAs and failure to exceed this can also lead to the suspension of the seller’s account. In doing so, Amazon has harmed competing e-commerce logistics operators by preventing them from proposing themselves to online sellers as providers of services of a quality comparable to that of Amazon’s fulfillment. These conducts have thus widened the gap between Amazon’s power and that of the competition also in the e-commerce order delivery business. Furthermore, as a result of the abuse, competing marketplaces have also been damaged: due to the cost of duplicating warehouses, sellers who adopt Amazon logistics are discouraged from offering their products on other online platforms, at least with the same. breadth of range. The Authority considered this abusive strategy to be particularly serious and, also in consideration of its duration, the effects already produced and the size of the Group, decided to impose the aforementioned fine of over 1 billion euros. To immediately restore competitive conditions in the relevant markets, the Antitrust has imposed behavioral measures on Amazon that will be subjected to the scrutiny of a monitoring trustee. Amazon must grant all sales and visibility privileges on its platform to all third-party sellers who know how to respect fair and non-discriminatory standards for fulfilling their orders, in line with the level of service that Amazon intends to guarantee Prime consumers. Amazon will have to define and publish these standards and, starting one year from the decision, refrain from negotiating with the carriers and / or competing logistics operators – on behalf of the sellers – rates and other contractual conditions applied for the logistics of their orders on Amazon.it, outside of Fba.