France votes to curb free Amazon deliveries in bid to boost struggling small bookstores

Updated

French politicians have approved a bill that will prevent Amazon from offering free deliveries of discounted books, in a move branded discriminatory by the American online retail giant.

The bill, designed to support struggling small bookstores, was backed unanimously in the lower house National Assembly and now looks set to become law following consideration by the Senate.

The draft law seeks to restrict the likes of Amazon from combining free delivery with discounts of up to 5 per cent on books, the maximum allowed under existing French legislation.

In 1981, the government ruled that publishers must set a unique selling price for their books in a bid to protect small retailers, and set a limit of 5 per cent on any discount.

Amazon was scathing in its response.

"Any measure aimed at raising the price of books will only reduce French people's spending power and introduce discrimination against online consumers," the company said in a statement.

While the measure is not specifically aimed at Amazon but at all retailers dispatching books by post, culture minister Aurelie Filippetti has singled out the US giant's practices in the past, blasting both free deliveries and the firm's tax arrangements.

The online retailer reports its European sales through a Luxembourg-based holding company, taking advantage of the Duchy's relatively low corporate tax rates for earnings outside its borders.

Amazon insists the arrangement, which has been criticised by politicians across Europe, is legal under the European Union's single market rules.

During the parliamentary debate preceding the vote on Thursday (local time), Ms Filippetti blasted Amazon for its "dumping strategy" and for selling books at a loss.

"Once they are in a dominant position and will have crushed our network of bookshops, they will bring prices back up," she said.

France is proud of a network of bookstores it says is "unique in the world" and crucial for culture to reach small towns.

The country has about 3,500 such stores - including 600 to 800 so-called independent retailers that do not belong to a publishing house, a chain or a supermarket.

Christian Kert, a politician from the main opposition right-wing UMP who introduced the bill, says online retailing is the only sector in the book market that was on the rise.

"It's hard for independent bookstores to find their place as their return on investment is very low," he said.

AFP

Topics: world-politics, small-business, business-economics-and-finance, retail, industry, books-literature, arts-and-entertainment, france

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