The competition authority in Italy has announced the imposition of a fine Amazon, due to abuse of market dominance and damaging the competition of the e-commerce logistics service, of 1,130 millions of euros. Besides, the Guarantor Authority of the Concorrenza e del Mercato (AGCM), which is the name of this body, has imposed on the multinational several measures related to its behavior, which will be controlled and supervised by an administrator. This has been confirmed in a statement.
Specifically, Amazon will have to guarantee sales benefits and visibility on its Italian website to all third-party sellers who comply with the standards of justice and non-discrimination in the fulfillment of their orders, in line with the level of service that Amazon tries to guarantee to consumers of the Prime program. Amazon must define these standards and make them public, and within a limit of one year after the date of the decision, refrain from negotiating, on behalf of sellers, fees and other contractual terms on logistics or seller requests on Amazon. it with competitive logistics or transport operators.
As stated by this Italian body, Amazon’s conduct in terms of competition in the country is “particularly serious«. It is the conclusion they have reached after an investigation into the multinational, opened in 2019 after the authorities’ doubts about whether Amazon was giving sellers who used their logistics service, known as Fulfillment by Amazon, more likely to be listed as Amazon’s choice when users were looking for a featured product in a separate section of its website, known as the Buy box.
Last year, the European Commission also opened an investigation into the company for the same practices within the European Union, but left Italy out of its scope of investigation, with the aim of allowing the Italian authorities to continue with their investigation, which has concluded with this fine. It is not the first that Amazon takes this year in Italy, since at the end of last November, the Italian authority in charge of supervising competition in the country imposed another sanction on the multinational, in addition to Apple, for the sale of Apple products on the platform’s website in the country following the terms of an agreement that harmed competition.
