Legal defeat for Amazon.com before the European Court of Justice (ECJ): The Digital Services Act (DSA) will not be suspended for the company. ECJ Vice President Lars Bay Larsen announced this decision on Wednesday. The judge's main reason for this is that the requested interim legal protection would delay the effect of the platform law “possibly by several years”. This is also likely to jeopardize EU lawmakers' efforts to make online portals more secure. According to Bay Larsen, if the DSA were not applied for the time being, as Amazon wishes, an online environment “that represents a threat to fundamental rights” could persist or develop further.
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The decision only concerns interim legal protection. The main proceedings brought by Amazon at the EU Court of Justice (EuG) against the classification as a “very large online platform” in the DSA sense, which took place in April 2023, are continuing there (ref. T-367/23). With the classification, the EU Commission has imposed several obligations on Amazon to reduce systemic risks.
Among other things, Amazon is bothered by the fact that it is supposed to make an archive with detailed information about online advertising publicly available and disclose algorithms. Amazon sees its fundamental rights to data protection and freedom of entrepreneurial activity violated. In addition, the DSA is intended to contain completely different business models, the company has joined a similar lawsuit filed by Zalando. There is no “systemic risk” of the distribution of harmful or illegal third-party content on its own platform.
Before the European Court of Justice, Amazon initially even achieved partial success: at the end of September, it ordered the suspension of the obligation to disclose the advertising archive with a detailed database of incoming online advertisements, including their content, brand name, subject, client and payer. The Commission appealed against this to the ECJ. Its president has now repealed the part of the lower court's decision that concerned the advertising archive. At the same time, Bay Larsen rejected Amazon's request for interim legal protection, thereby finally ending this part of the dispute. The main proceedings before the European Court of Justice continue.
DSA has not yet threatened the existence of Amazon
The ECJ Vice-President considers Amazon's arguments in case C-639/23 P(R) to be “not insignificant”, according to the EU's highest court sitting in Luxembourg. Nor could they be viewed as “completely baseless.” It is also likely that the trading giant could “suffer serious and irreparable damage” as a result of the failure to grant a suspension before a possible ECJ ruling that might have a different decision on the matter. However, these findings are not decisive on their own. For example, Amazon did not demonstrate that the existence or long-term development of the group would be at risk if the DSA obligations were recognized.
Ultimately, the overarching goals represented by the EU legislators took precedence over Amazon's own interests, says Bay Larsen, explaining his consideration. The legislature was of the opinion that very large online platforms played an important role in protecting fundamental rights on the Internet. An Amazon spokesman said he was disappointed by the decision. The group does not operate a very large platform within the meaning of the DSA and should not have been classified as such. Customer safety is Amazon's top priority.
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