American e-commerce giant Amazon announced on Wednesday that it has launched legal action in the European Union to challenge the rules imposed on it under new online platform laws at the end of the summer.
At the end of April, the Commission presented a list of 19 “very large platforms”, including Amazon, but also Twitter, TikTok, Apple, Google, Meta and Microsoft, which will be subject to increased controls from August 25th.
Under the Digital Services Act (DSA), these companies are subject to scrutiny by the European Commission and stricter rules, including requiring an independent annual audit to ensure they are effectively tackling misinformation, online hate or counterfeiting.
They must open their algorithms to experts from the European executive branch and provide accredited researchers with access to their data.
They must also analyze for themselves the risks associated with their services with regard to illegal content and take measures to mitigate them.
The 19 “very large platforms” were named based on their number of active users in Europe, estimated at more than 45 million, the threshold set by the regulation.
“The DSA was designed to address the systemic risks posed by very large companies whose primary source of revenue is advertising and the dissemination of language and information,” but “the vast majority of our revenue comes from our retail business,” said an Amazon spokesman who was contacted by AFP.
“Amazon does not fit the DSA’s description of a ‘very large online platform’ and should not be labeled as such,” he added.
The company feels discriminated against compared to its competitors in the mass distribution sector.
“If the very large platform label applied to Amazon and not the other major retailers in the EU, Amazon would be unfairly singled out and forced to perform costly administrative duties,” the spokesman continued.
Amazon already says it invests in protecting its customers from illegal products, regardless of legal obligations. The group states that it will have provided 1.2 billion US dollars (1.08 billion euros) for this in 2022.
On June 27, another e-commerce player, German group Zalendo, announced that it had appealed to the Court of Justice of the European Union to challenge its classification as a “very large platform” and sees itself as a victim of “unequal treatment “.