The European Commission has charged the US retail company Amazon with unfair competition practices in online retail markets.
"The Commission takes issue with Amazon systematically relying on non-public business data of independent sellers who sell on its marketplace, to the benefit of Amazon's own retail business, which directly competes with those third-party sellers", the statement by the EU antitrust regulators read.
The regulators have also initiated a second probe into the US tech giant's e-commerce business practices.
Amazon has denied the charges, arguing that the company occupies less than one percent of the global retail market.
The EU first launched an antitrust probe against the US company in July to look into the company's alleged anti-competitive practices.
The commission specified that it would probe if and how the use of marketplace data about sellers — including their products and transactions — by Amazon as a retailer "affects competition."
In particular, the investigation aimed to look into standard agreements struck between the shopping platform and independent sellers and the role the accumulated data plays in selecting winners of Amazon’s Buy Box, a button on a product’s page allowing customers to add items directly to their shopping carts.
