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By Elvira Pollina and Maria Pia Quaglia
MILAN (Reuters) – Italy’s anti-monopoly guard on Thursday said Amazon (NASDAQ 🙂 had fined 1.130 billion euros ($ 1.28 billion) for alleged abuse of market dominance in one of the largest sanctions imposed on a US tech giant in Europe.
Amazon said it “strongly disagreed” with the Italian regulator’s decision and would appeal.
Global regulatory control of technology giants has intensified following a series of privacy and misinformation scandals, as well as complaints from some businesses that they are abusing their market power.
Also Amazon, Alphabet (NASDAQ:) Google, Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ :), Apple Inc. (NASDAQ 🙂 and Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ 🙂 They have a lot of control over Europe.
The Italian watchdog said in a statement that Amazon had used its leading position in the Italian market for brokerage services to take on its own logistics service – Amazon.it’s active vendors – activated on Amazon.it.
The authority said Amazon is tied to a set of exclusive benefits that help increase Amazon.it’s visibility and increase sales by using FBA access, including the Prime label.
“Amazon prevents third-party vendors from linking the Prime label to offers that are not managed by the FBA,” he said.
The Prime label makes it easy to sell 7 million loyal and high-spending consumers to Amazon’s loyalty program.
The anti-competitive authority also said it would set corrective steps to be reviewed by a trusted follow-up.
Amazon said the FBA is a “completely optional service” and is not used by most third-party Amazon retailers.
“When vendors choose the FBA, it’s because it’s efficient, convenient, and competitive in terms of price,” the U.S. team said in a statement.
“The proposed fine and remedies are unjustified and disproportionate,” he added.
The EU Commission said it had worked closely with the Italian competition authority on the issue, within the framework of the European Competition Network, to ensure consistency with the two ongoing investigations into Amazon’s business practices.
The first was opened in July 2019 to assess whether the use of sensitive data by independent retailers selling on its market was in breach of EU competition rules.
The second, in late 2020, focused on preferential treatment of Amazon’s retail offerings and market vendors that use Amazon’s logistics and delivery services.
“This investigation is part of today’s decision by the Italian competition authority to examine Amazon’s behavior in the Italian logistics market,” the Commission said on Thursday.
($ 1 = $ 0.8832)
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