US trading giants
Italy imposes million-dollar fine on Amazon
Italy’s antitrust authority imposed a fine of ten million euros on Amazon. photo
© Moritz Frankenberg/dpa
Amazon has to pay ten million euros in Italy for unfair business practices. But the US company is unlikely to be particularly interested in these sums.
Italy’s antitrust authorities have taken action against the US retail giant Amazon fined ten million euros for unfair business practices. The Autorità Garante della Concorrenza e del Mercato justified this on Wednesday in Rome by saying that on the online group’s Italian website, the purchase option for many products was automatically set to “regular” instead of “one-off”. This significantly restricts consumer choice.
Two Amazon subsidiaries are affected, Amazon Services Europe based in Luxembourg and Amazon EU. The amount of the penalty shouldn’t matter much to the US company: in the last quarter of the previous year alone, the trading giant made a profit of more than ten billion euros.