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Amazon is suing the EU’s antitrust regulators for allowing Italy’s competition watchdog to pursue its own case against the US-based online retail behemoth. The Italian case concerns the way Amazon selects its sellers. Now, the company is arguing that this investigation should be included in the EU’s overall investigation.

Amazon took their case to the Luxembourg-based General Court (Europe’s second-highest) on Tuesday. According to court filings, it asked the court to annul the EU’s decision to exclude Italy from its overall investigations.

The case comes two months after the European Commission opened an investigation into the company’s criteria to select who wins its ‘buy box.’

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Amazon’s alleged crimes

The buy box allows customers to add items from a specific retailer directly into their shopping carts. The investigation will also examine whether the company gives preferential treatment to the marketplace sellers who use its logistics and delivery services and its own retail offers.

The Italian case started in 2019 over the same things, but it focuses on the Italian logistics market alone.

Amazon says that the EU needs to absorb the Italian case for the sake of consistency and efficiency.

The call to efficiency

Amazon says that when the European Commission decides to investigate something, the law says that the national competition authorities cannot investigate the same topic. The company said in its statement that this did not happen in the Italian case.

The Commission released a statement saying that it would defend its decision to allow a separate Italian investigation in court.

In November, Amazon was charged with damaging retail competition using its data, size, and power to gain an unfair advantage over the smaller merchants pushed to sell on its online marketplace.