Italy fines Amazon €1.128 billion

The Italian Competition Authority fined Amazon for abuse of its dominant market position and pushing third-party sellers to use Amazon’s logistics service ‘Fulfilment by Amazon’. The 250-page report describes Amazon as not giving third-party sellers equal positioning on its platform. Only the sellers who paid and used the ‘Fulfilment by Amazon’ logistics service and had stock in Amazon warehouses could participate in the Amazon Prime delivery service. In addition, Amazon designed its e-commerce platform in such a way that the items from third-party sellers using ‘Fulfilment by Amazon’ were listed more prominently than the same items from the same sellers, when sold directly to the customer. Amazon was fined €1.128 billion and has to create a new set of standards for third-party sellers, as well as review the use of behaviour-manipulating techniques.