Italy’s regulatory agency announced this Tuesday (23) a fine of 200 million euros (US$225 million, R$1.2 billion) to American companies Apple and Amazon for violating competition rules, by restricting access from the Amazon platform to some resellers of Apple products.
For this reason, the Italian agency determined that Amazon must pay a fine of 68.7 million euros, and the Apple group, 134.5 million euros.
The investigation allowed “to establish that some clauses of the contract signed on October 31, 2018, which prohibited the official and unofficial resellers of Apple and the Beats company from using the Amazon.it platform and allowed only Amazon and selected vendors individually and in a discriminatory manner, the sale of Apple and Beats products in this market, violated article 101 of the Treaty on the functioning of the European Union”, informs the statement.
According to the Italian organization, the investigation also made it possible to establish the “will” of the two companies to “introduce purely quantitative restrictions on the number of resellers” in order to increase their earnings.
This behavior is even more serious, because “at least 70% of purchases of electronic products made by the public in Italy take place on the Amazon platform”, says the Italian regulator.
The body also recalls that the jurisprudence of the Court of Justice of the EU establishes that “distribution systems, in order to be compatible with competition rules, must be based on qualitative, non-discriminatory criteria and apply equally to all potential resellers”.
This investigation served as a model “for competition authorities in Germany and Spain, which also initiated similar proceedings”, according to the Italian body.
harmed consumers
The consumer association Codacons considered the measure adopted by the Italian authority positive.
“Any limitation on the access of operators to e-commerce platforms harms consumers”, stressed the president of Codacons, Carlo Rienzi, cited by the AGI agency.
In this specific case, “on the one hand, restrictions imposed on sellers of Apple products limited the choice of buyers and, on the other hand, reduced the possibility of obtaining discounts”, according to the same source.
The Italian competition authority usually imposes this type of economic sanction. In May, it fined Google 102 million euros ($114 million, R$636.5m) for abuse of dominant position.
The fine was decided in light of the Internet giant’s refusal to accept on its Google Play platform an application launched by third parties to find charging stations for electric cars, according to the Italian antitrust agency.
Italy is not the only country that controls the behavior of the big technology companies that dominate the world market.
The US Competition Authority (FTC) and many US states have launched investigations and prosecutions against Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon, the famous GAFA group, for abuse of dominant position in various markets, from social media to digital advertising and e-commerce .
Amazon largely dominates the cloud, but it is primarily its e-commerce platform that generates the most complaints. The company is a judge and a party, as it sets the rules and sells its own products.
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