The Federal Cartel Office has announced that Amazon will no longer be allowed to set price limits for sellers on the German Amazon Marketplace. The authority said it has prohibited the online retailer from influencing the prices that other marketplace merchants can charge. Only in exceptional circumstances, such as cases of price gouging, may Amazon use its price‑control mechanisms.
President Andreas Mundt explained that Amazon competes directly with other merchants on its platform. Because of this, any attempt by Amazon to influence competitors’ pricing-even by imposing upper limits-can only be justified in rare cases. “Otherwise, there is a risk that the price level on the marketplace is driven by Amazon’s interests and used in competition against the rest of online trade outside of Amazon” he said. Sellers who are forced to lower their prices could find their costs impossible to cover and risk being pushed off the platform entirely.
Amazon employs several tools to monitor sellers’ prices. If the system deems a price too high, the corresponding offer can either be removed from the marketplace altogether or suppressed from the highlighted shopping view, according to the cartel office. Such visibility restrictions could generate “significant sales losses” the agency warned.
Mundt stressed that the goal of providing consumers with “as low prices as possible” does not conflict with competition law. Instead, the price‑control mechanisms are not necessary to achieve that objective; alternative approaches exist.
The cartel office said the mechanisms are based on opaque rules and notifications. Sellers are not given clear guidance on how price limits are determined, nor on where those limits lie. They are also not able to predict under which exact circumstances their listings could become invisible or only partially visible. The systematic interference with the pricing freedom of marketplace sellers is viewed as abuse under the special regulations for large digital firms and a breach of general anti‑abuse provisions.
In addition, the cartel office exercised, for the first time, the newly reformed 2023 authority to extract the “economic advantage” that Amazon has obtained through unlawful conduct. Under this amendment, the advantage can be determined by a presumptive rule. Because the infringement continues to persist, the office has now fixed a provisional penalty of roughly €59 million.
The investigation was coordinated with the European Commission, which is responsible for enforcing the EU digital markets regulation, and the decisions on transparency requirements were aligned with the Federal Network Agency, which oversees the Platform‑to‑Business regulation.
The decision is not yet final. Amazon can file an appeal within one month, and the case will ultimately be decided by the Federal Court.