With Amazon probe, European Union takes cue from 'hipster' antitrust

EU Competition Commissioner says, the EU was looking into the issue because it came up in a broad e-commerce sector investigation concluded last year

The European Union’s antitrust cop has taken an aggressive lead in regulating US tech giants in recent years. But with its latest query into Amazon.com, the EU is echoing the views of a 29-year-old legal scholar across the Atlantic.
 

EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said Wednesday she had begun a preliminary probe into whether data the e-commerce giant collects from retailers that sell on its site gives Amazon an edge in marketing its own products to customers. Vestager said the EU was looking into the issue because it came up in a broad e-commerce sector investigation concluded last year, and also because “this is also what a lot of people are talking about by now.”
 

And to a large degree, Lina Khan, an academic fellow at Columbia University Law School, helped shape that debate. As a student at Yale Law School, Khan wrote a paper for the Yale Law Journal called “Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox,” which argues that the current antitrust enforcement framework is ill-equipped to tackle Amazon’s dominance and the potential harm it poses to competition. 

Khan’s ideas on Amazon fit into a broader movement — mockingly dubbed “hipster antitrust” by critics — that is led by a small group of policy wonks who are encouraging tougher competition enforcement by the US.

EU tells Facebook 'patience at limit' on consumer rules

The EU warned social network Facebook on Thursday to bring “misleading” consumer terms in line with the bloc’s rules by the end of the year or risk financial penalties.

“My patience has reached its limit,” EU Justice and Consumer Affairs Commissioner Vera Jourova said in a statement.
 

“It is now time for action and no more promises.” Jourova said she would call on consumer protection authorities across the 28-country bloc, which requested the changes last year, to act swiftly and sanction the company if Facebook failed to comply.
 

“While Facebook assured me to finally adapt any remaining misleading terms of services by December, this has been ongoing for too long,” she said. AFP/PTI