The Autorité guarantor de la concurrence et des marchés (AGCM), gendarme of competition in Italy, imposed on Amazon, Thursday, December 9, a fine of more than 1.128 billion euros for ” abuse of dominant position “, for having discriminated against sellers who had not used its logistics service. “Amazon has harmed competing operators in the logistics service of e-commerce”, noted the AGCM in a press release.
The American online distribution giant had already been imposed a penalty of 68.7 million euros in November, again from the Italian gendarme, for breach of competition rules by restricting access to the Amazon platform of some resellers of Apple products. This behavior is all the more serious in the eyes of the Italian antitrust“At least 70% of purchases of consumer electronics products in Italy” are done on Amazon.
Excluded from a “core benefit package”
Thus, the dominant position of Amazon in the Italian market “Enabled it to promote its own logistics service … with sellers active on the Amazon.it platform to the detriment of competing operators”, judged the Italian authority Thursday. Sellers who do not use Amazon’s logistics service are in fact excluded from a “Set of essential advantages to obtain visibility and better sales prospects”, she continues.
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 adopted in November a draft regulation on digital markets (Digital Markets Act) to better regulate the Internet and put an end to the abuses of power by the giants of the sector.