By Bart H. Meijer
(Reuters) -The European Union’s General Court on Wednesday dismissed a request by Amazon to scrap its designation as a platform subject to stricter requirements under EU online content rules.
Amazon had contested the lawfulness of the provision in the EU’s Digital Services Act that specifies which online platforms are labeled as “very large”. Those companies are required to do more to tackle illegal and harmful content on their platforms.
The EU’s second-highest court said the EU was right in considering that marketplaces exceeding the threshold of 45 million users could be included in that group, as they too could pose a risk to society.
Amazon said it was disappointed in the ruling and that it intended to launch an appeal.
“The Very Large Online Platform status was designed to address systemic risks posed by very large companies with advertising as their primary revenue and that distribute speech and information,” it said in a statement.
“The Amazon Store, as an online marketplace, does not pose any such systemic risks; it only sells goods, and it doesn’t disseminate or amplify information, views or opinions.”
The court in its ruling, however, said the risks were posed by “disseminating illegal content or infringing fundamental rights, including consumer protection”, and said interference was justified.
“The obligations imposed on those platforms … are intended to prevent those risks, even if they entail significant financial burdens for those platforms,” it added
The court also dismissed all other arguments by the U.S online retail giant.
(Reporting by Bart Meijer and Alessandro Parodi, Additional reporting by Supantha Mukherjee; Editing by Ros Russell and Ed Osmond)
