In a ruling handed down last month France’s highest administrative court, the Conseil d'État (CE), rejected Amazon's challenge to an order requiring online retailers to charge a minimum of €3 on book deliveries for orders under €35.
France has long cherished its network of independent bookshops, one of the largest in the world, per capita, and wandering through the streets of a French city the bookshops bring a unique joy.
Since 1918, with the ‘Loi Lang’ book prices have been fixed. The aim was to prevent supermarkets and large chains from using books as loss-leaders and destroying independent bookshops.
However, with the arrival of Amazon, the game changed, for the US giant found a way to compete without breaking the price-fixing rule: it could not discount the book itself, so it made delivery almost free.
In 2014 France responded by a law banning free book deliveries, to which Amazon riposted by charging €0.01 for delivery.
To counter this latest attempt to subvert the intentions of the legislature, in April 2023 France imposed a minimum postal delivery fee, fixed at €3 for any book order under €35.
For orders above €35, delivery could be as cheap as the retailer wished, subject to the requirement that it not be entirely free.
Amazon quickly launched a legal action, which ended up in the European Court of Justice, who threw it back at France, arguing that it was for France's court to determine whether the measure was justified, proportionate and necessary to achieve its stated objective.
In its ruling last month, the CE concluded that the three conditions identified by the CJEU were met, considering that the minimum tariff was in the general interest, and that it was not disproportionate.
The CE found that the text is compatible with European law and does not impede the free movement of goods, as Amazon had claimed.
The decision comes shortly after Amazon announced plans to invest more than €15 billion in France between 2026 and 2028, spanning logistics infrastructure, cloud computing and AI development. At the moment there is no indication that the investment will not proceed.
Related Reading:
