Online retail giant Amazon reaches settlement with EU, agrees to make big business changes, skips 10% fine

US online retail giant Amazon has reached a settlement with the European Union and has agreed to make big business changes avoiding a 10 per cent fine.

The European Competition Commission in a news conference said, “The Commission has decided to accept commitments offered by Amazon. These commitments address our preliminary competition concerns about Amazon practices on its e-commerce marketplace.” 

The retail company faced three charges, Reuters reported.  

In the first case, the company was charged for using its data, size and power to push its own product to the top making it unfair to other merchants on the platform. 

To settle the charge, Amazon agreed to not use sellers’ data for its own benefit. 

The second charge dealt with equal treatment of sellers when ranking offers the “buy box” on the website, generating bulk orders. 

Amazon agreed to set up a secondary buy box for the rival product if it has a different price and delivery time in comparison to the ones in the first box. 

In the third case, the retail company agreed to allow the sellers under the prime feature to choose their own logistics and service timings other than itself. 

When asked, Amazon said that it was pleased to address EU’s concerns.

A spokesperson for Amazon said, “While we continue to disagree with several of the preliminary conclusions the European Commission made, we have engaged constructively to ensure that we can continue to serve customers across Europe.”

The EU further added that the commitments will stay in force for seven years in the case of the Prime and Buy box policy and five years for other parts. 

The commission also said that if Amazon breaks any of its commitments it can impose up to 10 per cent of the company’s turnover as a fine.

(With inputs from agencies)