European Authorities to widen Amazon antitrust probe after Reuters story: Labour Union

1. Amazon under the radar of Worldwide Trade Union

A worldwide trade union for the services industry requested European antitrust authorities to expand their investigation into Amazon.com Inc to see if the Company was involved in manufacturing counterfeit items and manipulating search results on its platform.

2. Trigger Point

Based on some internal Amazon documents, it was revealed that the e-commerce company ran a systematic campaign of copying products and manipulating search results in India, a key growth market, to boost its private brands such as AmazonBasics. Even though, the same issues were seen in the Reuters report.

The European Commission’s European arm stated in a letter dated Oct. 22 to President Ursula von der Leyen, and also addressed to EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager, that authorities in the EU must examine if Amazon participated in “similarly harmful activity within the European Union.”

In addition to the foregoing, the scale of Amazon’s operations to undermine that level playing field surface, further action is needed to ensure it is held accountable at every turn,” the letter, seen by Reuters, said. cited the Reuters story.

However, Amazon and the European Commission spokespersons did not immediately reply to calls for comment whereas the European authorities are already investigating Amazon’s position as both a marketplace for merchants and a rival seller.

3. Indictment

The Commission charged the US business for abusing its scale, influence, and data to gain an unfair advantage over smaller merchants selling on its web platform last year. Amazon said at the time that it only accounts for less than 1% of the global retail industry and that there are larger competitors in every region where it operates.

However, the Amazon documents reviewed by Reuters showed how the company’s private-brands team in India secretly exploited internal data from its India unit to copy products sold by other companies, then offered them on its platform. The company also promoted sales of its private brands by rigging search results on its India platform, the documents showed.

However, Amazon responded to the article by stating that “these assertions are factually false and unfounded.” The firm did not provide any more information. According to the firm, the way search results are displayed does not favor private-label items.

4. Aftermath

Five members of the US House Judiciary Committee wrote to Amazon CEO Andy Jassy after the Reuters article was published last week, accusing the company’s senior officials of misleading or perhaps lying to Congress about Amazon’s business practices.

U.S. Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, a prominent critic of Amazon, called for breaking up the company after the report, while in India, a group representing millions of brick-and-mortar retailers has asked the government to take action against Amazon.

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