Amazon fined 1.1 billion euros for unfair competition

As it leaves its European rivals eating dust, Amazon has found a hiccough in Italy: the country’s competitions watchdog has slapped the American retail giant with a 1.13b billion euro (965m pounds) fine for harming rival e-commerce logistics services and promoting its own.

The regulator said Amazon negatively impacted rivals by only giving companies which used its in-house delivery service access to the ‘prime’ label. Other logistics companies could not offer the same benefits to customers. Amazon said it would appeal, calling the decision “unjustified and disproportionate”.

In its ruling, the Italian watchdog said that “Amazon holds a dominant position in the Italian market” which it had “leveraged to favour the adoption of its own logistics service… to the detriment of the logistics services offered by competing operators, reported City AM.

“Amazon harmed competing e-commerce logistics operators, preventing them from presenting themselves to online sellers as providers of services of comparable quality to Amazon’s,” the regulator added.

Europe’s marketplace is increasingly privy to regulatory watchdogs when it comes to taxes and foreign players. In November the European General Court issued a 2.42 billion euro anti-trust fine to Google for giving preferential treatment to its own price-comparison shopping service over rivals.