EU launches inquiry into Amazon over data use, as Germany strikes deal on website’s merchant agreements
- German sellers should now get 30 days notice and reason for being removed from the website, instead of getting kicked off without warning or explanation
Germany’s Federal Cartel Office said on Wednesday it was dropping its seven-month investigation after Amazon agreed to amend a business services agreement that applies to hundreds of thousands of merchants trading on its platform.
Within hours, however, EU antitrust regulators said they would open their own investigation into whether the world’s largest online retailer’s terms of service and use of merchant data violated competition rules.
The changes will apply not only to Germany, Amazon’s second biggest market after the United States, but also to its websites worldwide, the German regulator said.
“We have achieved far-reaching improvements for retailers on Amazon’s marketplaces,” cartel office chief Andreas Mundt said in a statement. “We are dropping our investigation.”