The EU Commission has dropped two antitrust proceedings against the American internet retailer Amazon.

At the same time, she made legally binding the company's concessions, which it had proposed in July to remedy the antitrust violations she had complained about.

Since then, the Brussels authorities have subjected the commitments to a so-called market test and have called on the companies affected by the restrictions on competition accused of the group, as well as consumer associations, to comment.

Their information was positive.

Werner Mussler

Business correspondent in Brussels.

  • Follow I follow

"The concessions will fundamentally change Amazon's business model in Europe, to the benefit of customers, sellers and carriers," said Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager in Brussels on Tuesday.

The company will change three key aspects of how it does business: its use of data, access conditions to Amazon's Buy Box and access to Amazon Prime.

The digital group can avoid a cartel fine through its commitments, compliance with which will be monitored by a trustee.

In view of Amazon's high annual turnover, this would certainly have reached billions.

An Amazon spokesman said that although the position differs from that of the EU Commission in a number of cases, it has worked constructively with it and is glad that Brussels' concerns have now been allayed.

Dual role as sales platform and retailer

The EU Commission opened a first procedure against Amazon in July 2019 and a second in November 2020, accusing the group of abusing its dominant position.

In the first case, the authority particularly disliked the company's dual role as sales platform and retailer.

As a marketplace service provider for independent traders, Amazon had extensive access to their non-public business data, the Commission complained about at the time.

This data went straight into Amazon's automated retail store.

There they would be used to “balance” the company's end customer offerings and its strategic business decisions.

This puts the other sellers at a disadvantage.

Amazon now wants to completely stop using seller data for its own retail business.

Equal treatment of all sellers

The second procedure related to the suspicion that Amazon preferred its own offers to those of other providers, firstly via its “Buy Box”, in which offers are clearly displayed, and secondly via its “Prime” sales model, with which subscription customers can also buy articles from others Dealer delivered free of charge.

The company wants to address these concerns by treating all sellers equally in the ranking of their offers for the "buy box" on its website, which generates the majority of its sales.

In addition, he wants to grant third-party providers the same conditions on “Prime” in the future.

They can also decide for themselves which companies will deliver their goods.

After all, forwarders and customers will be able to communicate directly with each other in the future;

so far, communication has been controlled by Amazon.

Some of the behavior criticized by the Commission in the Amazon case is one of those restrictions on competition that are to be prohibited from the outset by the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which was finally passed in July, for particularly large digital groups – Amazon is likely to be one of them.

However, Vestager emphasized that the DMA will not make antitrust proceedings unnecessary.

Some of Amazon's commitments now made are not covered by the new law.

The EU consumer protection association BEUC praised the end of the process.

Amazon's pledges should mean that consumers will have more choice on the platform and will be able to find the "best deals" more easily.

It is correct that the Commission accepted the commitments.

“It saves us years of further legal wrangling.” However, consumers will only benefit from the decision if the Commission ensures that the commitments are implemented.

"If necessary, it must be touched up."