The European Commission has formally indicted Amazon for misusing non-public business data from independent sellers, a practice that would create a head start for its retail businesses.
The Commission itself announced it.
The EU antitrust also launched a second formal investigation into the possible preferential treatment of the offers put in place by Amazon towards sellers who use the company's logistics and delivery services.
The Commission has reached the preliminary conclusion that Amazon has
illegally abused its dominant position
as a service provider in Germany and France.
The e-commerce giant "may have used sensitive data on a large scale to compete with smaller retailers. Now it's up to them to answer," explained EU Commission Vice President Margrethe Vestager.
According to Brussels, the vast amount of data on third-party sellers that Amazon has access to flows directly into automated sales systems, which aggregate this data and use it to calibrate Amazon's retail offerings and strategic business decisions to the detriment of other sellers on the market.
The EU antitrust then launched
a second investigation
into the alleged unfair practices that Jeff Bezos' company allegedly put in place to encourage the sale of its products and sellers who use its Amazon logistics and delivery services.
In particular, the criteria established to select the winner of the so-called 'Buy Box', which allows sellers to offer products to users subscribed to the Amazon Prime loyalty program, and the use of Prime by independent sellers itself are in the sights.
Now the ball passes into the court of the Seattle-based company, which is called to answer the charges in the coming weeks.
"We do not agree with the preliminary statements of the European Commission and we will continue to make every effort to ensure that" Brussels "has an accurate understanding of the facts":
so in a note Amazon replies to the EU antitrust
that has made formal accusations against it. possible unfair practices.