European Union: Issued ECJ Ruling on Amazon's appeal

On 20 April 2023, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) issued its ruling regarding Amazon.com Inc’s appeal (C-185/21 P) against the European Commission (EC)’s investigation into Amazon’s alleged unfair commercial practices that possibly favoured its own retail products or that of marketplace sellers that used Amazon’s logistics and delivery services. The EC’s investigation would have included the entire European Economic Area (EEA) except Italy, as the Italian Competition Authority had begun a similar investigation in the Italian market in April 2019. Amazon’s initial appeal submitted on 19 January 2021 sought an annulment of the EC's decision insofar as it excluded Italy from the scope of its investigation. Its argument was based on a possible violation of Article 102 of the Treaty of the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), which states that if the EC intends to initiate investigation proceedings on a market case, it should do so as soon as possible where a competition authority of a Member State has already started a case, and “shall only do so after consulting with that national competition authority”. The ECJ confirmed the General Court's ruling, and ruled that Amazon's appeal on the basis of the EC’s exclusion of Italy from the scope of proceedings deprived the company of protection against parallel proceedings by the EC were not valid.