The Bundeskartellamt's Annual Report 2025/26, published June 30, 2026, closes the loop on a case that has been quietly reshaping German platform enforcement for years. On February 5, 2026, the agency prohibited Amazon from using algorithmic price-control mechanisms on its German Marketplace and, in the same decision, ordered the disgorgement of roughly €59 million in economic benefits — the first time the Bundeskartellamt has used its 2023-reformed profit-skimming power (Bundeskartellamt). Amazon is appealing, and because the case rests on Section 19a of the Competition Act (GWB) — Germany's ex ante regime for companies of "paramount significance for competition across markets" — the appeal skips the regional appellate court and goes straight to the Federal Court of Justice (BGH).
What Amazon actually did
The conduct at issue was narrow but consequential. The Bundeskartellamt found that Amazon ran three systems that flagged third-party marketplace offers as "pricing errors," excluded listings deemed to have "excessively high prices," or dropped offers judged "uncompetitive" against prices found elsewhere — in each case by removing the listing outright or knocking it out of the Buy Box, the default purchase button that drives the overwhelming share of marketplace sales. Sellers were not told the underlying thresholds. The agency held this violated both the general abuse provisions of Section 19 GWB and Article 102 TFEU, and the digital-specific Section 19a(2), given Amazon's more-than-70% share of German marketplace revenue. President Andreas Mundt's framing was pointed: if Amazon wants sellers to price competitively, it can cut the fees it charges them, rather than unilaterally policing prices from a position no single retailer should hold over its competitors.
There is a real case for this kind of intervention. Marketplace price parity and visibility rules are a known vector for platform self-dealing — Amazon has faced parallel scrutiny from the European Commission and the FTC over similar dynamics — and opaque algorithmic pricing controls are hard for outside sellers, let alone regulators, to audit after the fact. A regulator that waits for years of case-by-case abuse litigation before acting effectively lets the harm compound. Section 19a exists precisely because Germany's competition authorities concluded that traditional ex post enforcement was too slow against digital gatekeepers with entrenched network effects.
Why the disgorgement order matters more than the ban
The price-control ban itself is a conventional abuse remedy. What makes this case a template is the disgorgement mechanism. Germany's 2023 GWB reform let the Bundeskartellamt calculate unlawfully gained benefits using a rebuttable presumption rather than proving exact enrichment — a significantly lower evidentiary bar than the fines regime. The €59 million figure is explicitly a partial, first-tranche number, since the agency treats the violation as ongoing until Amazon's nine-month compliance deadline (November 5, 2026) passes. That structure — cash clawback plus a running clock — gives the Bundeskartellamt leverage that a one-time fine doesn't: dragging out an appeal does not stop the meter.
That is also the strongest objection to how this tool is being used. A presumption-based disgorgement calculation shifts the burden onto the company to prove it didn't benefit by the presumed amount, which is a meaningfully different posture than "the regulator proves the harm." Amazon's appeal reportedly argues the German approach sits awkwardly against EU competition law, and there's a legitimate question of whether a national authority should be the one calibrating financial remedies for conduct that also falls within the European Commission's Digital Markets Act jurisdiction over Amazon as a designated gatekeeper. Parallel national and EU enforcement tracks against the same company, for adjacent conduct, risk double jeopardy in substance even where the legal doctrines formally differ.
The Apple case shows where this is heading next
The Annual Report frames Amazon as the closed chapter and Apple's App Tracking Transparency Framework (ATTF) as the open one — the agency says it continues to coordinate with other European authorities on ATTF. The Bundeskartellamt's preliminary assessment, sent to Apple in February 2025, argues Apple defines "tracking" in a way that exempts its own cross-app advertising data combination while subjecting rivals to consent flows that can run up to four dialogs against Apple's two, worded to steer users toward allowing Apple's own data use and discouraging third-party consent. Apple has since proposed neutral, aligned consent prompts, but German publisher associations are pushing the Bundeskartellamt to reject that fix and fine Apple instead, arguing Apple would still control the gate (9to5Mac). If the agency agrees, Apple faces exposure up to 10% of annual turnover — an order of magnitude beyond Amazon's clawback.
The proportionality test is coming at the BGH
Section 19a was designed to let Germany move faster than Brussels against a small set of gatekeepers. The Amazon disgorgement is the law's first real financial test, and the BGH's ruling on the appeal will determine whether presumption-based clawbacks are durable enforcement or a due-process shortcut that gets narrowed on review. Regulators are right that opaque platform-side pricing controls deserve scrutiny; the open question is whether lowering the evidentiary bar to calculate the remedy is proportionate, or whether it invites the kind of appeal that leaves the underlying conduct rule intact while the money changes hands slower than intended. Innovation policy is best served by predictable rules applied with rigor, not by remedies whose size turns on procedural presumptions a court has not yet tested.