That is what the European Commission said today when it filed antitrust charges against Amazon.

It accuses the e commerce giant of attempting to gain an unfair advantage over sellers on its platform.

The commission says Amazon collects nonpublic data from sellers and consumers and uses that data to leverage its dominance in its two biggest European markets, France and Germany.

The European Union started looking into Amazon back in 2018.

Amazon faces a possible fine of up to 10% of its annual worldwide revenue that could amount to billions of dollars.

The company has rejected the accusations.

Here is what the EU Commission executive vice president said today about Amazon.

Our concern is not about Amazon retail, about the insights that Amazon retails has into the sensitive business data of one particular Sim.

Rather, they are about the insights that Amazon retail has about the accumulated business data, or more than 800,000 active sellers in the European Union covering more than a billion products.

In other words, this is the case about big data.

We have therefore come to the preliminary conclusion that the use of these data allows Amazon to focus on the sail off the best selling products on this martial, marginalized third party sellers and caps their ability to grow.

So are consumers getting a bad deal when they buy or sell on Amazon?

Let's pose that question tonight to Agustin Rate.

He is with the European Consumer Organization, be you see which lobbies for consumer interest and protection at the European Union.

It's good to have you on the show.

I hope I got your your name right, Mr Rain, Is that correct?

Yes, that's correct.

Good evening.

Good evening.

Do you agree with the European Commission?

Is Amazon hurting competition and is the consumer paying for it?

As consumer organizations, we are equally concerned that Amazon could be using this commercially sensitive information it collects in its platform to unfairly influence consumers to favor Amazon on products.

And here we're talking about sensitive information that could range from the number off orders on ship units of products.

The sellers revenues on the marketplace.

The number of visit to sellers offers data relating to shipping or to the seller's past performance.

So we're talking about the substantive amount off Datas executive vice president of a stagger mentioned Andi.

These practices might end up harming consumers in the medium and the long term by favoring its own products and making it harder for sellers to compete.

Amazon could be reducing consumer choice off online products and sellers on in the long run, even increasing prices.

Consumers have to pay you to the to the lack of competition.

So we're talking about extremely important case.

I know that when you use Amazon, it is true.

The independent sellers, the office that they make.

It's always in smaller print, and Amazon doesn't really make it obvious to you when you're looking at their page.

But what would you say to those sellers, who would argue that there is no other platform that is going to give them exposure to such a large customer base as Amazon?

Well, that's exactly the problem that we are we're facing on.

The retailers are facing because there's no other options, so they have to accept the conditions imposed by by Amazon.

Basically, there is a great degree of dependency on if we think about the current pandemic, when shops have to close there, their doors, uh, due to the different confinement on lock down measures taken by different member states.

Consumer have to go and buy online.

Andi consumers were rushing to the Amazon.

So basically, retailers, we're depending heavily on on Amazon to reach our customers.

So what do you want?

What would you like to see Amazon do?

Um, if if they were willing to do whatever you said in order to get rid of this antitrust suit, what would they have to do?

Well, first of all, they would have to address the specific concerns on distrust.

Investigation takes time on DWI will be able to assess in detail the scope off, the off, the off the harm and the and effects off this off this practices.

So certainly, um, if Amazon will like to address this dis concerns that will have to discuss how to deal with this data practices with the commission's in a way that they don't get on anti competitive advantage by getting this data on the way that, of course, they use it.

PCB, the retailer's Mr I've got about 30 seconds here.

I just wanted to get your thoughts.

It's about we see the European Union, um, you know, taking issue with Google, for example, and now with Amazon.

Is the consumer in the European Union enjoying the, in your opinion, the best protection that it can get anywhere on the globe?

As consumers in the European Union?

We are in a privileged position compared to consumers in other parts of the world, not only regarding competition, longer visual enforcement but also consumer laws, data protection laws.

The problem, however, is that we're talking about global companies, so these situations and and this probably need to be tackled globally.

So we also, um, the benches, certain extent on other jurisdiction, actually to take in action against against this these companies, that's a good It's a very good point because this size matters with companies like this.

Augustine Raina, with the European Consumer Organization be You see, Mr Rader, we appreciate your time and your insights tonight.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Have a nice evening.