On December 3, 2025, the European Commission officially announced that after a two-year in-depth investigation, it has confirmed that U.S. e-commerce giant Amazon has clearly abused its dominant market position and initially decided to impose a 4.5 billion euro antitrust fine on the company. Although this amount is lower than the 7.4 billion euro fine imposed on Google in 2021, it remains the largest single fine issued by the EU against the e-commerce industry. According to EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, the investigation focused on Amazon’s “dual role as platform operator and merchant”. Evidence shows that Amazon used the sales data of third-party merchants available on its platform to accurately identify popular product categories before launching its own branded products. At the same time, it manipulated search rankings through algorithms to place its own products and merchants that paid high advertising fees in prominent positions, while adopting measures such as demotion and blocking against small and medium-sized merchants that refused to cooperate. This model of “acting as both referee and player” has severely squeezed the living space of local EU e-commerce enterprises. In 2024 alone, more than 12,000 small and medium-sized European merchants withdrew from Amazon’s European sites due to inability to withstand competitive pressures.

In a statement, the head of Amazon Europe expressed “deep disappointment” with the EU’s penalty decision, arguing that the investigation conclusions ignored the more than 900,000 jobs the platform has created in Europe, and stated that the company has initiated an appeal process. Meanwhile, Amazon urgently announced three adjustments to its European site rules: disclosing core algorithm indicators for search rankings, stopping the use of non-public data from third-party merchants to develop its own products, and establishing a 1 billion euro fund to support the digital transformation of small and medium-sized European merchants. This penalty has triggered a chain reaction in the global technology industry. Cross-border e-commerce platforms such as eBay and AliExpress have quickly held compliance meetings to conduct self-inspections for similar issues; tech giants including Google and Meta have also strengthened internal antitrust reviews to avoid becoming the next regulatory target. Market analysts point out that the EU’s move marks the entry of platform economy supervision into an “era of strong constraints”. In the future, the global cross-border e-commerce industry will usher in a more fair but more competitive new pattern, and the bargaining power of small and medium-sized merchants is expected to improve.