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Similar to the European Commission’s investigation and the stand-alone German and Italian investigations into Amazon’s anti-competitive behaviour, Austria is now investigating whether Amazon is exploiting its market dominance in relation to other retailers that use its website as a marketplace.
The Austrian regulator said it would examine terms and conditions under which the U.S. online giant grants Austrian vendors access to its marketplace.
In a statement, it said “[T]here is a suspicion…
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On April 16th 2019, Italy’s antitrust authority said that it had launched a probe into five Amazon companies for possible abuse of dominant market position in e-commerce and logistical services. The companies being looked into include Amazon Services Europe, Amazon Europe Core, Amazon EU, Amazon Italia Services, and Amazon Italia Logistica. In comments sent via e-mail, Amazon said “We are fully cooperating with the Authority.” The Authority said the probe would be wrapped up by April 15th, 2020…
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Following Ms. Vestager’s investigation into Amazon and its own sector enquiry into online price comparison services in October 2017, in June 2018 the German Federal Cartel Office (“Bundeskartellamt”) claimed that it “received a lot of complaints” and is said to be “looking at the role and market power of Amazon” with regards to Amazon’s hybrid function. (Nicholas Hirst, MLEX, 27 June 2018, Amazon’s ‘hybrid function’ catches eye of German antitrust enforcers.) Germany is Amazon’s…
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In September 2018, EU’s antitrust watchdog, the European Commission, launched a preliminary investigation into how the platform uses data about merchants. Margrethe Vestager, EU Competition Commissioner said that the informal probe concerns the e-commerce group’s dual role as a competitor while simultaneously acting as a host to third-party merchants, who sell goods on Amazon’s websites. “The question here is about the data,” Ms. Vestager said.
The Amazon marketplace investigation follows up…
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Amazon has been accused of treating its UK warehouse staff like robots. Between 2015 and 2018, ambulances were called out close to 600 times to Amazon’s UK warehouses. A Freedom of Information request to ambulance services from the GMB union revealed 115 call-outs to Amazon’s site in Rugeley, near Birmingham, including three related to pregnancy or maternity related problems and three for major trauma. At least 1800 people work year-round at the Rugeley warehouse and more than 2000 more can…