The European Commission said Tuesday that it accepts the changes offered by Amazon to stop using the non-public data of sellers who sell through its platform to comply with European Union competition rules and thus avoid a penalty for unfair competition.
As explained at a press conference in Brussels by the Vice President of the European Commission responsible for Competition, Margrethe Vestager, the commitments accepted by the technology giant will be «legally binding» from June 2023, since the company has a period of six months to put all the changes into practice.
With the agreement announced Tuesday, which comes after Amazon «improved» some of its initial commitments following a first test over the summer, Brussels puts an end to two investigations opened in 2019 for abuse of position and practices against fair competition for the use of private data of sellers and the way it influenced sellers’ access to its Prime program and Buy Box shopping service.
Specifically, Amazon agrees to stop using data on revenue, shipments, inventory-related information, consumer visit data or seller performance on the platform.
This is a move that will cover both Amazon’s automated tools and the employees who use this data to make better decisions.
As for the Amazon Buy Box service, which highlights a seller’s offer and allows one-click shopping, the U.S. company has committed to apply equal treatment to all sellers when raising offers to consumers and to show a second offer if there is a good enough advantage in terms of price or delivery.
In this case both offers will display the same descriptive information and provide the same shopping experience to enhance the consumer experience.
As for Amazon Prime, which offers ‘premium’ services in exchange for an annual or monthly fee, the e-commerce giant has committed to establish «non-discriminatory» criteria for rating sellers and offers.
It has also pledged to allow sellers to freely choose carriers for their delivery services and negotiate terms directly with them.
Among the improvements requested from Amazon following the first offer of changes presented in July and which were included in a second proposal in September is to increase transparency and early information flows to users so that they are aware of their improved rights as soon as possible.
In addition, it raises from five to seven years the period of application of the changes agreed between Amazon and Brussels in relation to Prime and Buy Box.
«We are pleased to have responded to the concerns of the European Commission and to have been able to resolve them,» said the US multinational.
«While we continue to disagree with some of their preliminary conclusions, we have maintained a constructive relationship with the Commission to ensure that we can continue to meet the needs of our customers in Europe and support the more than 225,000 small and medium-sized European companies that sell in our stores,» they added.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)