The world’s
largest online retailer, Amazon.com could face an EU antitrust investigation within days
over its use of merchants’ data, a person familiar with the matter said on
Wednesday.
The European
Commission has been seeking feedback from retailers and manufacturers since
September last year, one of several competition enforcers taking a deeper look
into Amazon’s business practices amidst calls by some for its break-up.
European
Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager has
said the issue is about a
company hosting merchants on its site and at the same time competing with those
same retailers by using their data for its own sales.
Merchants have
complained about harm caused by Amazon copies of their products.
Politico first
reported the investigation last week.
The Commission
had been struggling to define the market in which Amazon operates in order to
identify where the competitive harm could have been, other sources said. They
said the issue was whether to look at Amazon in the overall retail market or in
its own niche.
The EU competition
enforcer, which can fine companies up to 10 percent of their global turnover,
did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
This would not
be Amazon’s first run-in with the Commission. Two years ago, it was told to pay
back taxes of about 250 million euros to Luxembourg because of illegal tax
benefits. That same year it settled with the regulator over its distribution
deals with e-book publishers in Europe.
Separately,
Amazon reached a deal with Germany’s antitrust authority on Wednesday to
overhaul its terms of service for third-party merchants, who had complained of
unfair treatment when selling through the world’s biggest online retailer.
- Reuters
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