26-05-2025
Amazon says EU has singled out US companies in a discriminatory manner
The European Union spent the past five to seven years focusing on regulating US companies specifically, which was done in a discriminatory manner, said Lucy Cronin, the vice president of EU public policy at Amazon.
Speaking at the 2025 Global Economic Summit at the Europe Hotel in Killarney on Monday, Ms Cronin told attendees that individual US tech companies were largely singled out when it came to the regulatory environment in the European Union.
Noting the EU's Digital Markets Act, which was implemented in 2022 to ensure a fairer and more contestable digital economy, Ms Cronin said only seven companies, none of which were European, had to comply with the act.
'As far as Amazon is concerned, I think it is important to note that we have those 150,000 employees in Europe. We are competing directly with retailers in each member state. But we, as a company, are held to a much higher compliance bar than those with whom we are competing.
'That means we spend 20%-30% of our tech spend on complying with EU regulation. What could we be doing with that money? We could be investing it, we could be innovating, we could be creating jobs with it,' Ms Cronin said as part of a panel discussion with David Swan, chief operations and sustainability officer and SMBC Aviation Capital, Daniel McConnell, editor of the Business Post and MC, Ivan Yates.
It is regrettable, this very protectionist approach that the EU has taken to tech regulation in the last five years.
Ms Cronin also took aim at the EU's Digital Services Act, which was similarly adopted in 2022 and aims to address illegal content, transparent advertising and disinformation.
Digital services taxes are applied on revenue, with Ms Cronin telling the conference: 'If you are anybody that knows anything about the retail sector, you will know it's a very, very small margin business. 'Applying a digital services tax to a retail business is very problematic.'
Amazon's International revenue grew 9% annually last year to $143bn, with the company's web service business increasing by 19% to $108bn. The company's total global revenue rose my 11% to a total of $638bn in 2024. Ten years ago, Amazon's total revenue was just $89bn.
In 2021, Luxembourg's data protection authority (CNPD) fined Amazon a record €746m for not complying with the EU's privacy rules.
Draghi report
The conference also featured talks and debates on the EU's response to the landmark Draghi report, which was published in September last year.
It warned that Europe had largely missed out on the most recent era of technological innovation, with a widening productivity gap growing between the EU and the US.
Since its release, the watershed analysis has become a cornerstone of the EU's policy agenda, with promises of cutting red tape, endorsing AI, and simplifying laws all part of the bloc's wider strategy to boost competitiveness and close the innovation gap.
However, the EU's approach has been met with mixed reactions by politicians and academics.
Many legal scholars have argued that the process of simplification could allow companies to avoid implementing concrete plans to reduce emissions, undermining the bloc's 2050 net-zero target.
Asked by moderator Ivan Yates if the EU has abandoned its sustainability commitments, calling the EU's Green Deal 'politically dead', Mr Swan said: 'Climate change is real.' 'From an aviation perspective, we all need to take it very seriously and act.'
Ms Cronin added: 'About 150 measures have already been adopted under the Green Deal. If you are a company operating in the European Union, you are already complying with a vast swathe of legislation that seeks to deliver a greener EU.
'The Green Deal may not be the political focus of the next five years, but what is important is that the measures already adopted serve as a mechanism to deliver those objectives set five years ago.'
On a national level, Mr McConnell said the current government shows a 'complete lack of interest' in the green agenda compared to just 12 months ago.
'It's like night and day,' Mr McConnell told attendees. 'They are ignoring the Greens. Now, the critics within the government say the Greens were just blockers to big projects from an ideological perspective,' noting the Dublin Airport passenger cap as an example.
'There have been blockages within the system, both on a political level and within the civil service, which the Taoiseach said is one of his main priorities to undo and unlock.'
