The Repression of Fraud (DGCCRF) announces this Wednesday to claim from the giant Amazon the payment of a penalty payment of 3.3 million euros. This decision comes after a “delay in bringing into compliance” contracts with merchants who sell products on the Amazon.fr platform.
The DGCCRF recalls, in a press release, that it had ordered Amazon, in December 2021, “to modify as soon as possible, and at the latest before March 22, 2022, certain clauses in its contractual conditions applicable to third-party sellers, due to in particular a significant imbalance of these contractual conditions in favor of Amazon”.
This injunction was accompanied by a penalty payment of 90,000 euros per day of delay “applicable in the event of non-performance on the part of Amazon from March 22, 2022”. But, “faced with a late return to compliance on April 28, 2022, the DGCCRF requests the payment of 3.33 million euros from Amazon, under the penalty payment”.
Up to 1% of worldwide turnover
In 2019, the company was sentenced by the Paris Commercial Court to a fine of 4 million euros “following a summons from the Minister for the Economy”, the court censoring “various unbalanced clauses in the contract that Amazon imposed on companies using its online marketplace, ”recalls the Directorate General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Prevention. She points out that a new investigation, launched in 2020 by the National Investigation Service (SNE) of the DGCCRF on the contractual conditions imposed by Amazon on third-party sellers, “had led to the finding of new irregularities”.
“Following these findings”, the DGCCRF indicates that it has decided “to make use, for the first time, of the new power of injunction under penalty provided for by the Commercial Code”, a legal tool making it possible to set amounts of dissuasive penalties, which may amount to up to 1% of worldwide turnover, “depending on the seriousness of the breach of economic public order observed”.
Asked on Tuesday evening after the publication of an article from Les Echos reporting on this affair, a spokesperson for Amazon France assured that the DGCCRF had “acknowledged” that the changes made in April by the platform were “in accordance with its injunction “. “However, we remain in disagreement with the DGCCRF on its conclusions, its decisions and the related penalty, and we challenge each of them in court. We remain committed to providing the best experience for our customers and vendor partners. “.