The Antitrust Attorney Blog
Author: Luis Blanquez
On 5 February 2026, Germany’s competition authority, the Bundeskartellamt, announced a landmark ruling prohibiting Amazon from continuing practices that influenced how independent sellers priced their products on the German Amazon Marketplace. The authority also ordered Amazon to disgorge €59 million in economic benefits that it determined were gained through these anticompetitive practices.
At the center of the ruling lies Amazon’s dual role in Germany’s online retail ecosystem. As in the United States, the company not only sells products through its own retail arm, Amazon Retail, but also operates the Amazon Marketplace, a platform where independent third‑party sellers list and sell goods directly to consumers. About 60% of all items sold on Amazon.de come from these independent sellers, who bear full responsibility for setting prices and managing the financial risks of their businesses.
The Bundeskartellamt concluded that Amazon used a variety of “price control mechanisms” to review whether sellers’ prices were “too high.” When Amazon’s systems flagged a price as unacceptable, the company responded by either fully removing the listing from the platform or excluding the offer from the Buy Box—the prominent purchasing option that strongly influences sales volume. These measures can severely limit a seller’s visibility and revenue.
According to the authority, this system created a significant competitive imbalance. President Andreas Mundt emphasized that Amazon directly competes with the very sellers who rely on its platform. When a dominant marketplace operator can restrict or manipulate competitor pricing—even indirectly through algorithmic controls—it risks shaping the entire price landscape according to its own commercial interests. Mundt warned that such interference could prevent sellers from covering their costs, potentially pushing them off the marketplace entirely.
The Bundeskartellamt made clear that it does not object to Amazon’s ambition to offer low prices to consumers. Instead, the issue lies in how Amazon has attempted to achieve that goal. Regulators argue that Amazon can provide competitive prices without directly constraining the pricing choices of independent sellers. To address the issue, the authority has restricted Amazon from using price control tools except under narrowly defined circumstances—particularly cases of excessive or exploitative pricing—and only in compliance with detailed requirements that the Bundeskartellamt has now established.
The regulator highlighted the implications of Amazon’s market position. Amazon accounts for roughly 60% of Germany’s online goods retail market, making it an undeniably influential digital gatekeeper. Because independent sellers depend heavily on Amazon’s infrastructure and visibility, any internal policy that affects pricing can have sweeping economic impact. The authority asserts that Amazon’s previous practices allowed it to act as both a competitor and an arbiter of acceptable pricing behaviors, creating a structural conflict of interest.
By limiting Amazon’s ability to use these mechanisms, the Bundeskartellamt aims to restore pricing freedom to third‑party sellers and safeguard the competitive process. The decision stresses the need to prevent dominant digital platforms from exploiting their market position by embedding competitive advantages into the algorithms and systems that govern visibility, listing status, and price acceptability. According to the authority, this type of intervention is crucial to ensuring that Amazon cannot extend its competitive power on the marketplace into the broader retail economy.
The ruling also reflects Germany’s broader regulatory framework for “market‑heavyweight” companies—a designation Amazon has held since 2022 under national competition law. This status subjects Amazon to stricter oversight and facilitates earlier and more decisive intervention when its practices risk impeding competition. The €59 million disgorgement order underscores the seriousness with which the Bundeskartellamt views Amazon’s pricing influences and signals an intent to hold dominant platforms accountable for competitive distortions arising from automated systems and internal policies.
This case illustrates how European antitrust enforcement seeks to preserve the competitive process, prevent gatekeepers from leveraging structural advantages to shape pricing behavior, and protect the competitive autonomy of smaller businesses operating within powerful digital ecosystems.
Full disclosure: Bona Law represents Zulily against Amazon in the United States. Zulily LLC et al. v. Amazon.com Inc., case number 2:23-cv-01900, in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay