The European Union plans to file formal antitrust charges against Amazon.com Inc. over the e-commerce company’s treatment of third-party sellers, according to people familiar with the matter.
The charges could be officially filed as early as next week or the week after, one of the people said. The European Commission, the bloc’s top antitrust regulator, has been honing its case, and the case team has been circulating a draft of the charge sheet for a couple of months, another person said.
The formal charges would be the commission’s latest step in a nearly two-year probe into AMZN, +1.79% lleged mistreatment of sellers that use its platform. The charges—called a statement of objections—stem from Amazon’s dual role as a marketplace operator and a seller of its own products, the people said. In them, the EU accuses Amazon of scooping up data from third-party sellers and using that information to compete against them, for instance by launching similar products.
Amazon declined to comment. It has previously disputed that it abuses its power and size and said that retailers commonly sell their own private-label brands.
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