Germany’s anti-cartel office drops Amazon inquiry

Third-party sellers in Germany no longer have to agree to “price parity” clause.

Germany’s antitrust regulation authority announced earlier this week that it is dropping an inquiry into Amazon’s pricing tactics, after the retailer abandoned a contentious pricing policy. In the inquiry, the Bundeskartellamt — Germany’s anti-cartel office — asserted that Amazon may have been unfairly limiting competition by forbidding its third-party vendors from selling their products for lower prices on other outlets, including their own websites, than on Amazon.