Following Reuters’ disturbing revelations that Amazon used internal data to replicate products of other companies in India, UNI Europa, representing 7 million service workers throughout the continent, is calling on the European Commission to broaden the scope of its Amazon antitrust investigation into whether the company has engaged in similarly anticompetitive behaviour within the European Union.
Last week new information surfaced on #Amazon‘s alleged use of privileged information to design its own knock-off products.
We’ve written to the @EU_Commission to call for this to be investigated.#DMA #MakeAmazonPayhttps://t.co/7S2Q6dqQAp
— Oliver Roethig (@ORoethig) October 22, 2021
“Using privileged data to develop its own knock-off products and rigging internet search results to promote its own brands, as reported by Reuters, are serious issues that the European Commission should look into to continue holding tech giants accountable,” UNI Europa states in its letter addresses to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Executive Vice-President Valdis Dombrovskis, Executive Vice-President Margrethe Vestager and Commissioners Nicolas Schmit and Thierry Breton.
Accusations against Amazon for anti-competitive behaviour are not new. Recently, the company received a record €746 million fine from Luxembourg’s data protection authority (CNPD) and is currently facing antitrust charges in Europe, the United States and India.
In recent years, and especially since the beginning of the pandemic, Amazon has amassed unparalleled influence over commerce, and it presents an unprecedented threat to the European social model. Not only do its business practices undermine collective bargaining and decimate high streets, but these new revelations suggest that the company is also willing to break the law to continue expanding its market share.