(Bloomberg) — Amazon.com Inc. moved a step closer to settling two European Union antitrust probes into how the U.S. ecommerce giant uses rivals’ sales data and whether it unfairly favors its own products, after it proposed remedies to appease EU concerns.
The European Commission said on Thursday that it’s asking rivals for their feedback on a proposed deal in two antitrust probes looking into its use of non-public data from sellers on its marketplace and “a possible bias” in granting sellers access to its Buy Box and its Prime program.
An EU agreement would take some of the heat off Amazon as national watchdogs in Europe start to ramp up their antitrust scrutiny of the US giant.
Germany’s Federal Cartel Office this month said Amazon should be subject to tough new antitrust rules due to its market dominance and Britain’s competition regulator said it’s probing whether Amazon is abusing its dominance in its UK Marketplace.
The offered commitments would cover all of Amazon’s “current and future marketplaces” in Europe, but exclude Italy for remedies concerning Buy Box and Prime following a decision by the competition authority there in November.
The Brussels-based commission started probing Amazon in 2019 over concerns the firm’s position allowed it to spot best-selling products and start stocking the same thing itself.
It laid out these concerns in more detail in a so-called statement of objections a year later. On the same day, the EU announced a second probe into how Amazon picks products for a prominent “buy box” that drives sales and may push retailers to use its own logistics and delivery services.
“While we have serious concerns about the Digital Markets Act unfairly targeting Amazon and a few other U.S.
companies, and disagree with several conclusions the European Commission made, we have engaged constructively with the Commission to address their concerns,” Amazon said in a statement.
The U.S.
company has drawn scrutiny in recent years for the vast trove of data it has amassed on a range of customers and partners, including independent merchants who sell on its retail marketplace, users of its Alexa digital assistant, and shoppers whose browsing and purchase history inform what Amazon shows them on its website.
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