EU to strike Amazon with antitrust charges over treatment of third-party sellers, report states

The European Commission is preparing to submit antitrust charges versus Amazon over the e-commerce giant’s treatment of third-party sellers on its website, according to a report Thursday from The Wall Street Journal.

The EU’s Competition Commission, the union’s leading antitrust regulator, might submit main charges as early as next week, according to the Journal. The charges will apparently implicate Amazon of utilizing information on independent sellers on its platform to introduce contending items. 

A spokesperson for the European Commission decreased to comment, including that its examination is continuous. Amazon likewise decreased to comment.

The European Union’s antitrust regulators opened an examination into Amazon in July 2019. The objective is to check out whether the e-commerce huge breached the EU’s competitors guidelines with its usage of information from independent sellers. Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, who supervises of the EU’s competitors policy, stated at the time that European clients store online for the choice and prices.

Vestager has a history of distributing huge antitrust fines to United States tech giants, with Google being struck especially tough. More broadly, Europe has a track record for controling tech business more strictly than in your home in the United States, and has actually been regularly unafraid of taking them to job.

“We need to ensure that large online platforms don’t eliminate these benefits through anti-competitive behaviour,” Vestager stated. “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.” 

Amazon has actually stated formerly that it does not utilize details gathered from third-party sellers when establishing its own items. However, the Journal reported in April that Amazon scooped up information from third-party sellers to assist it figure out prices of its own items, which includes to reproduce or whether to get associated with an item classification.