EU Probes Amazon Over Alleged Price-Parity Rules

What the EU is looking into

The European Commission is probing whether Amazon set unfair limits on firms that use its online marketplace, and it is doing the review under the bloc's Digital Markets Act, which sets required and forbidden practices for large tech companies. A commission spokesperson said the commission is in "regular dialogue with Amazon and its business customers to monitor compliance with the parity ban requirement" under the DMA.

Seller complaints and reporting

As part of the review, the commission asked third-party sellers whether they faced so-called price-parity rules, described as measures that reportedly punish sellers for listing goods or services at lower prices on rival marketplaces or on the sellers' own websites. Bloomberg reviewed documents and spoke with people familiar with the matter, and some sources spoke only on condition of anonymity.

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Why it matters for your portfolio

One seller contacted by the commission, Jack Nekhala, the inventor of the Bed Scrunchie, told Bloomberg that if his company sold the product at a lower price on its own website, Amazon could reduce its visibility on Amazon's marketplace and that practice would allow the U.S. e-commerce company to "influence prices across the internet." Since the DMA was established in 2023 it has led to several high-profile cases, including multi-million-euro fines on Apple Inc., Meta Platforms Inc., and Alphabet Inc.'s Google, actions that the article says have angered the White House of U.S. President Donald Trump and added strain to EU-U.S. trade relations. Amazon said it is "committed to complying with the DMA and we always engage constructively in the commission's ongoing regulatory oversight."

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