Restrictions on competing companies, fines Apple and Amazon

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November 23, 2021 The Italian Antitrust Authority sanctioned Amazon and Apple for a total of € 200 million at the end of the investigation on the restrictions on access to the Amazon.it marketplace by legitimate resellers of Apple-branded products and "Genuine" Beats. The penalties amounted to 68.7 million euros to companies of the Amazon group and 134.5 million euros to companies of the Apple group. The authority has ordered those companies to end the restrictions by allowing Amazon.co.uk to resellers of "genuine" Apple and Beats products in a non-discriminatory way.

In the investigation, the intention was established to introduce a purely quantitative restriction on the number of retailers, allowing only Amazon and certain subjects, identified in a discriminatory way, to operate on Amazon.it. The terms of the agreement also restricted cross-border sales, as retailers were discriminated against on a geographic basis. The restrictions of the agreement have affected the level of discounts offered by third parties on Amazon.it, decreasing their size. The restrictiveness of these conducts, explains the Antitrust, appears to be confirmed by the fact that Amazon.it represents the place of electronic commerce where at least 70% of purchases of consumer electronics products in Italy are made.of which at least 40% is represented by retailers who use Amazon as an intermediary platform. It therefore appears essential that the application of competition rules ensure a level playing field for all retailers who use marketplaces as an increasingly important place for carrying out their commercial activity, especially in today's context, avoiding the implementation of discriminatory behaviors that restrict the competition. In this perspective, the Authority's decision recognizes, in line with the jurisprudence of the EU Court of Justice, the need for distribution systems, in order to be compatible with competition rules, to be based on qualitative criteria, not discriminatory and applied equally to all potential resellers. The authority,underlines the note that it was the leader in this action and, thanks to its intervention and collaboration, the national competition authorities of Germany and Spain subsequently initiated similar proceedings.

Apple is preparing to appeal the Antitrust sanction because it believes it has done "nothing wrong".