By Foo Yun Chee
BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Amazon asked Europe’s second-highest court on Thursday to scrap its designation as a platform subject to stricter requirements under landmark EU online content rules, arguing that it poses no systematic risks to its users.
The Digital Services Act, which came into force in 2022, requires Big Tech companies to do more to tackle illegal and harmful content on their platforms.
The U.S. online retail giant took its grievance to the Luxembourg-based General Court after the European Commission classified it as a very large online platform (VLOP) under the DSA.
A VLOP designation requires companies to do more to tackle illegal online content, undertake risk management, conduct external and independent auditing and share data with authorities and researchers.
“Online marketplaces like the Amazon Store do not pose systemic risks. Second, the VLOP rules do not and cannot rationally assist in preventing the dissemination of illegal or counterfeit goods,” Amazon’s lawyer Robert Spano told the court.
“The VLOP rules therefore make no sense when applied to online marketplaces,” he said.
Amazon said any risks are limited to individual customers, not the totality of its users and that even if problematic products exist, widespread exposure is minimal and already dealt with by a number of product safety and compliance laws.
“When it comes to marketplaces like the Amazon Store, size does not multiply risk. It is an arbitrary, disproportionate and discriminatory metric,” Spano said.
The court will rule in the coming months.
Meta Platforms, Chinese social media app TikTok and German online retailer Zalando have also challenged the DSA on various grounds.
The case is T-367/23 – Amazon EU v Commission.
(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee; Editing by Joe Bavier)
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