The Court of Justice of the European Union rejected the tech giant’s demand to prevent Italy conducting parallel antitrust investigations into its e-commerce selective criteria. Amazon asked in January this year an annulment of the EU’s decision to exclude Italy from the wider investigation conducted by the European Commission into the criteria the company uses to select winners of its “buy-box” i.e., allegedly, specific retailers are given preferential treatment.

This is the second formal investigation into the activities of the e-commerce giant, who was found to breach European antitrust rules by using third-party sellers’ data to inform its strategic business decisions, such as reducing the price of products.

Following the results of this investigation, Eu antitrust regulators decided to investigate Amazon’s buy-box. Further investigations into the Amazon’s Prime loyalty programme will follow, as apparently this favours Amazon’s products and only the sellers using the tech giant’s logistics platform.

is currently examining the situation and the company does not exclude an appeal.

The online retailer also a €746m fine imposed by national privacy watchdog CNPD for breaching GPDR regulation by collecting and using individuals’ private data.