The European Commission buys into Amazon's flawed commitments

Recently, Amazon made a series of proposed commitments to the European Commission, promising (with, it seems, its fingers crossed behind its back) to behave better in terms of wielding its awesome market power over other businesses using its platforms.

Along with 11 other NGOs and trade unions, we co-wrote a submission to the EC in September, laying out the flaws in Amazon’s proposals, saying that the EC should reject them outright and instead consider stronger medicine.

After that, Amazon made a (somewhat) improved offer of these commitments, and the European Commission accepted these improvements, without even fining Amazon for past misbehaviour.

We have issued a press release, which can be summarised as follows: these commitments are better than the first round of commitments, but still fall far short of what is needed: notably, breaking up the company to get rid of its deadly conflicts of interest, once and for all.

For the press release, please click here.

For an earlier explainer of the issues, please click here.