The European Commission asks Amazon for more details on how it is implementing the DSA

The European Commission demanded Amazon to submit more information on the measures it has taken to implement the DSA last Friday, July 5.

Specifically, Amazon is asked to provide detailed information on its compliance with the provisions relating to the transparency of recommender systems, the input factors, features, signals, information, and metadata applied to such systems, and the options offered to users to opt out of being profiled for recommender systems. 

The company should also provide further information on the design, development, implementation, testing, and maintenance of the Amazon Store ad library online interface and supporting documents relating to its risk assessment report.

All information by Amazon must be delivered to the European Commission by July 26. In case of non-compliance, this could entail the formal opening of proceedings under Article 66 of the Digital Services Act.

Amazon is trying to avoid the DSA 

Faced with requests made by the European Commission, Amazon has attempted to seek to be absolved from complying with the DSA in court. It claimed that submitting some data would violate its fundamental rights to data protection and freedom of business activity. With this application, it joined the one brought by Zalando.

The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) rejected this claim, adding that "the suspension would lead to a delay, potentially of several years, in the full achievement of the objectives of the Regulation on the single market for digital services and thus potentially allow an online environment threatening fundamental rights to persist or develop."

The Commission's next steps will be to analyze the responses and determine the next steps based on this. This would result in severe penalties, with fines of up to 6% of annual turnover. In addition, the executive authority may also impose fines for incorrect, incomplete, or misleading information in the responses to the request for information.

UPDATE: Amazon's official answer

After we released this content, Amazon reached out via one of their PR agencies, in this case via Jessica Ramkema from WEBER SHANDWICK to share with us this official statement:

“We are reviewing this request and working closely with the European Commission. Amazon shares the goal of the European Commission to create a safe, predictable, and trusted shopping environment. We think this is important for all participants in the retail industry, and we invest significantly in protecting our store from bad actors, illegal content, and in creating a trustworthy shopping experience. We have built on this strong foundation for DSA compliance.”