Italy’s antitrust authority (AGCM) has fined Amazon €1.13 billion ($1.28 billion) for “abuse of dominant position,” the second penalty it has imposed on Amazon during the last month. Amazon holds a place of “absolute dominance” within the Italian brokerage providers market, “which has allowed it to promote its own logistics service, called Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA),” the authority wrote in a (Google translated) press launch.

According to the AGCM, corporations should use Amazon’s FBA service if they need entry to key advantages just like the Prime label, which in flip permits them to take part in Black Friday gross sales and different key occasions. “Amazon has thus prevented third-party sellers from associating the Prime label with offers not managed with FBA,” it stated. 

The authority stated entry to these features are “crucial” for vendor success. It additionally famous that third-party sellers utilizing FBA will not be topic to the identical stringent efficiency necessities as non-FBA sellers. As such, they’re much less prone to be suspended from the platform in the event that they fail to satisfy sure targets. Finally, it famous that sellers utilizing Amazon’s logistics providers are discouraged from providing their merchandise on different on-line platforms, not less than to the identical extent they do on Amazon. 

The AGCM stated it imposed the steep superb because it thought of Amazon’s actions to be “particularly serious” given their length and the results they’ve brought about. On high of the superb, it has demanded that Amazon grant the privileges loved by FBA sellers to all third-party sellers, supplied they respect different guidelines and legal guidelines. It should outline and publish these requirements inside a 12 months, and its actions might be enforced by a monitoring trustee.

Last month, Amazon and Apple have been fined $228 million in Italy for unfairly proscribing Beats gross sales by limiting them to pick out retailers. The EU additionally handed Amazon a file $888 million superb for violating the bloc’s strict GDPR knowledge privateness legal guidelines. Other tech giants are additionally underneath scrutiny within the EU. Notably, the EU just lately opened an antitrust investigation into Apple’s App Store guidelines, significantly over commissions associated to in-app purchases. Engadget has reached out to Amazon for remark.