The National Court has provisionally suspended the fines that the National Markets and Competition Commission (CNMC) imposed in July 2023 on Apple and Amazon for a joint amount of 194.15 million euros for agreeing and executing certain competition restrictions in Amazon’s ‘market place’ in Spain and that affected third-party resellers of Apple products and competing products of the latter company.
The decision of the National Court, which partially upholds the appeal presented by both companies against the CNMC decision, has been reflected in two orders dated December 2023, as contained in the documentation published in the Judicial Documentation Center (Cendoj). and advanced by the newspaper ‘La Información’.
In this way, section number 6 of the Contentious-Administrative Chamber of the National Court has provisionally suspended the fines imposed on Apple Distribution International in the amount of 128.64 million euros and on Apple for 15 million euros (143.64 million euros in total), as well as that of 50.51 million euros for Amazon Services Europe, Amazon Europe Core and Amazon EU.
In both cases, the National Court conditions the precautionary suspension of the fines on the companies providing a guarantee for the amounts indicated.
The judicial body has also provisionally suspended the prohibition on all the mentioned companies from contracting with the public administration, a measure that was included in the resolution adopted by the CNMC.
However, the National Court has reiterated the obligation for both Apple and Amazon to cease the conduct that gave rise to the fine imposed by the CNMC.
In its appeal, Amazon alleges that full payment of the sanctions imposed would imply the immediate commitment of “almost 25% of the liquid assets as of December 31, 2022 of the companies” affected.
“These are sums that are allocated both to current expenses of the company (such as payment to suppliers, salaries, etc.), as well as to capital investments already planned and ongoing throughout Europe, including the opening of new distribution centers and storage, which results in bringing distribution closer to customers and, therefore, a more sustainable distribution,” states the published order.
“The accounting situation of the sanctioned companies as a whole would result in losses amounting to 720,446,350 euros. As of December 31, 2022, ASE, AEC and AEU maintain debts with the Public Treasury, Social Security and third parties that, in total, they amount to 3,295,988,782 euros,” he adds.
In this context, Amazon sources have indicated to Europa Press that the company will continue working on appealing the CNMC’s decision since it “disagrees” with it.
“We also do not agree with the CNMC’s suggestion that Amazon benefits by excluding sellers from the store, since our business model is based precisely on the success of the companies that sell through Amazon, many of them. which are SMEs. In addition, as a result of the agreement with Apple, Spanish customers have benefited from a wide variety of products, which has more than doubled in the last four years, and from excellent offers, as well as faster shipping”, the company added.
