The EU Commission believes that Amazon is abusing its dominant position in online trading and is systematically using non-public data from retailers on its own marketplace for its own business. This was announced on Tuesday by the EU Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, who is responsible for competition policy.

She is taking the next formal step after the opening of the cartel proceedings in July 2019. At the same time, she is initiating further antitrust proceedings against the US group, in which there is a presumed preference for its own offers and marketplace sellers who use certain Amazon services.

Notes on illegal business practices The EU Commission had officially initiated the competition proceedings against Amazon in mid-July 2019 in order to suspect illegal Follow business practices. The background to this is Amazon’s dual role as an online retailer and platform for other online retailers. The suspicion that Amazon is exploiting this advantage in an anti-competitive manner to optimize its own offer has evidently been confirmed. The EU Commission has now stated that it has been shown that Amazon employees have very large amounts of non-public sales data from marketplace online retailers. They would be evaluated automatically in order to balance out end customer offers and Amazon’s business strategies – “to the detriment of the other sellers on the marketplace”.

Amazon knows, for example, which products of independent traders sell best and how much money they make from it. Amazon is also known how often the offers are called up, what it looks like when shipping and to what extent consumer rights are exercised. Amazon can use the information to decide which products will be included in its own range and also adapt it to its competitors based on the non-public data. In this way, Amazon avoids “the normal business risks associated with competition in the retail sector,” the commission criticizes. If the suspicion is further confirmed, there would be a violation of EU law.

The second, now initiated procedure is about the criteria according to which Amazon assigns the shopping cart field for products and how it enables independent merchants to supply Amazon Prime customers. There is a suspicion here that Amazon prefers in-house offers, but also those from marketplace sellers who use Amazon’s logistics and delivery services (“dispatch by Amazon”). Again, there could be a violation of EU law if the allegations are confirmed. In the first antitrust proceeding, Amazon can now, among other things, inspect the investigation files after the statement of objections and apply for a hearing.

(mho)