How Amazon sets criteria for allocation of suppliers to be the preferred/first choice in the ‘Buy Box’.How Amazon collects and uses third-party seller data, including whether this gives Amazon an unfair advantage in relation to business decisions made by its retail arm.The CMA has announced that it is investigating: What the CMA is investigating and how it connects to other investigations Taking into account reports that the Commission is about to market test commitments offered to it by Amazon, the CMA’s decision to open proceedings could mean one of three things: it wants Amazon formally to offer the same commitments for the UK (which is only possible if there are formal proceedings) it thinks Amazon’s commitments do not go far enough and therefore wants to insist on further measures or it disagrees that this is an appropriate case for commitments, and wants to retain the possibility of imposing a large fine. Rather than waiting for the European Commission to conclude its investigation and seeing whether Amazon might be willing to extend any remedies imposed by (or agreed with) the Commission to the UK, the CMA has decided to open a full-blown investigation itself. It was therefore somewhat of an open secret that the CMA was considering what action it should take with respect to these practices. As a result of Brexit, the UK market would no longer be covered by these investigations. Below, we dissect the importance of the UK and German developments.Īs is well known, the European Commission has been investigating Amazon since July 2019 for its collection and use of third-party seller data and it opened an additional investigation in November 2020 relating to the criteria Amazon uses for selection in its “Buy Box” and for eligibility to sell under the “Prime” label. It comes at a time when Amazon is reported to be close to completing an early resolution to the European Commission’s investigations into whether it breached EU competition laws.
Amazon was the recipient of not one but two pieces of bad news yesterday, with the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) announcing that it has launched an investigation under the Competition Act 1998 into possible abuses of dominance by Amazon, and the German Federal Cartel Office (FCO) designating Amazon as a digital gatekeeper under its new regulatory regime.
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