Italy sentences Apple and Amazon to 200 million euros in fines for infringement of competition

Published on : 11/23/2021 – 19:29

Internet giants hit in the wallet for anti-competitive practices. Italy sentenced Amazon and Apple on Tuesday, November 23, to a heavy fine of 200 million euros for having restricted access to the platform of certain resellers of Apple products, in a “discriminatory manner”, according to the competition police.

This fine comes as the countries of the European Union have increased financial sanctions against American and Chinese digital heavyweights in recent months, in an effort to better regulate their activities.

A key committee of the European Parliament also adopted on Tuesday a draft regulation on digital markets (“Digital Markets Act”, DMA) to better regulate the Internet and put an end to the abuses of power by the giants of the sector.

This draft still has to be adopted by Parliament in plenary session and then by the Member States before entering into force.

“Restrictions” to increase earnings

The Italian Antitrust “imposed a sanction of 68.7 million euros on companies of the Amazon group and a sanction of 134.5 million euros on companies of the Apple group,” said a statement.

The investigation opened by the Italian authority “made it possible to establish that certain clauses of the contract signed on October 31, 2018 prohibiting official and unofficial resellers of Apple and Beats products from using the Amazon.it platform and allowing the selling Apple and Beats products in this market only to Amazon and to certain sellers individually and in a discriminatory manner violates Article 101 of the Treaty of Operation of the EU “.

According to the Italian gendarme, the investigation also made it possible to establish “the will” of the two companies “to introduce purely quantitative restrictions on the number of resellers” in order to increase their earnings.

This behavior is all the more serious in the eyes of the Italian Antitrust as “at least 70% of purchases of consumer electronics products in Italy” are made on Amazon.

“Similar procedures” launched in Germany and Spain

“We strongly disagree with the decision and we will appeal,” Amazon responded in a statement to AFP, calling the sanction “unjustified and disproportionate”.

The group denies deriving any benefit from excluding resellers “because our business model is based on their success”. “We believe we have done nothing wrong and we will present an appeal,” said Apple for its part, ensuring that it is committed to “the safety of our customers and the integrity of the products they buy.”

The Italian regulator recalls that the case law of the Court of Justice of the EU establishes that “distribution systems, to be compatible with competition rules, must be based on criteria of a qualitative, non-discriminatory nature and apply equally to all potential resellers “.

This investigation will also have served as a model “for the national competition authorities in Germany and Spain who have also launched similar procedures”, assures the Italian competition policeman.

Practice “harmful to consumers”

The Codacons consumer association for its part congratulated itself: “Any limitation of access to operators on electronic commerce platforms represents a damage for consumers”, declared Carlo Rienzi, president of Codacons, quoted by the agency. AGI.

In this specific case, “the restrictions imposed on sellers of Apple products on the one hand limited the choice for buyers and on the other hand reduced the possibility of obtaining discounts,” he said.

The Italian gendarme of competition is used to this kind of sanctions. In May, he imposed a fine of 102 million euros on Google for abuse of a dominant position, calling into question its refusal to accept on its Google Play platform a third-party application to find charging stations for electric cars. .

Italy is not the only country to take a close look at the behavior of these technology companies that dominate the global market.

The American competition authority (FTC) and many American states have thus launched investigations and prosecutions against Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon – the famous GAFA -, accused of abuse of a dominant position in their various markets, social networks to digital advertising to online commerce.

With AFP