Italy fines Amazon $1.3 billion for abusing its dominance in market
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The EU Commission said it had cooperated closely with the Italian competition authority on the case, within the framework of the European Competition Network, to ensure consistency with its two own ongoing investigations into Amazon's business practices
Italian regulators have fined Amazon 1.1 billion euros ($1.3 billion) in an anti-trust case on Thursday for allegedly abusing its dominance in the market.
The Italian Competition Authority said that Amazon’s dominant position in the marketplace “has enabled it to favour its own logistics service with sellers active on the Amazon platform to the detriment of competing operators in that market and to strengthen its own dominant position.
“The abusive strategy adopted by Amazon is particularly serious, since it is likely to discourage, if not eliminate, competition in the relevant markets," read the 250-page decision by the competition watchdog.
The move comes two weeks after the same authority imposed a 68.7-million-euro fine on Amazon for infringing EU laws through restrictions that penalised sellers of Apple and Beats products.
In the same action, Apple was ordered to pay 134.5 million euros.
The watchdog on said Thursday that third-party sellers who do not use Amazon’s logistics service are excluded from “a set of advantages essential for obtaining visibility and better sales prospects”, reports Reuters.
Those included better access to Amazon's “most loyal and high-end customers” who use Amazon Prime, the e-commerce giant's loyalty program.
The EU Commission said it had cooperated closely with the Italian competition authority on the case, within the framework of the European Competition Network, to ensure consistency with its two own ongoing investigations into Amazon's business practices.
(With inputs from agencies)