The Bundesgerichtshof (Federal Court of Justice) has scheduled a hearing for 26 January 2027, 9:00 a.m., in Karlsruhe on Amazon's interim-relief application against the Bundeskartellamt's decision of 4 February 2026. The case is KVB 13/26 (Press Release No. 201/2026, dated 23 October 2026). The headline question is whether Amazon may keep its "price control mechanisms" on amazon.de. The deeper question is who gets to regulate gatekeepers: Bonn, Brussels, or both.
What the Bundeskartellamt ordered
The order (file B 2-73/20) bars Amazon from deactivating offers from unaffiliated sellers, or denying them access to the "Featured Offer" slot, when their prices exceed thresholds Amazon calculates per product. Per the Bundeskartellamt's press release of 5 February 2026, the authority found abuse under the special rules for large digital companies (Section 19a(2) GWB) and under the general abuse provisions, Section 19 GWB and Article 102 TFEU. It also ordered disgorgement of an economic benefit, initially set at about €59 million. MTR Legal's account of the BGH hearing says this is the first use of the disgorgement power introduced in the 2023 reform and that the amount is provisional. Price controls remain permitted only against grossly disproportionate pricing.
Sources diverge on one point. Jones Day describes the €59 million as a fine. The Bundeskartellamt and the BGH proceedings treat it as disgorgement. The difference matters: disgorgement claws back a benefit and is not a penalty.
The strongest case for the regulator
The authority's logic is serious. Amazon is both the marketplace operator and a competitor to the sellers on it. The Bundeskartellamt reports that roughly 60 percent of goods sold on amazon.de come from independent third-party sellers. An operator that can silently delist a rival's offer, or strip its Buy Box visibility, because the rival undercuts Amazon's own benchmark has a strong tool for suppressing price competition. Consumers may pay more even when a cheaper seller exists. Disgorgement also answers a real enforcement problem: a prohibition alone lets a firm keep gains from years of conduct.
Why the procedural question deserves more attention than the merits
Amazon's challenge, according to the BGH press release, centres on competence. It argues that EU law left the Bundeskartellamt without power to issue the order, citing Article 1(6) second sentence point (b) of the Digital Markets Act and Article 3(2) of the E-Commerce Directive. The court will decide in the interim proceedings whether there are "serious doubts" (ernstliche Zweifel) about the order's lawfulness. It is not yet deciding the final merits.
This is not a technicality. The DMA was designed to harmonise gatekeeper obligations across the single market. If each member state's authority can layer its own conduct rules on the same gatekeeper and the same platform behaviour, firms face up to 27 overlapping regimes. The harm falls hardest on smaller platforms, which cannot afford 27 compliance tracks. Amazon has made this fragmentation argument publicly. Our view is that the argument deserves a judicial answer on its own terms, whatever one thinks of Amazon's pricing practices.
The Bundeskartellamt has a response. The order rests partly on Article 102 TFEU and the general Section 19 GWB, not on Section 19a alone, and the authority says it coordinated closely with the European Commission. National authorities have applied Article 102 in parallel with the Commission for two decades. If the BGH accepts that the order stands on that foundation, Amazon's competence argument weakens considerably.
A proportionate way to read the case
The suspensive-effect request has suspended the compliance deadlines until the interim proceedings conclude. MTR Legal reports Amazon was originally to adapt its conduct within nine months. That pause is ordinary procedure. It is also the right outcome for a novel question of competence: forcing a platform to re-engineer pricing systems nationwide, only for a court to hold the authority lacked power, would impose real costs on sellers and shoppers for no gain.
Three things to watch on 26 January:
- Does the court reach the merits? The BGH said the focus will be Amazon's competence objection and whether serious doubts exist. A finding of doubt would suspend the order for the duration of the appeal. Rejection would start the clock on compliance.
- Whether it refers to Luxembourg. A preliminary reference to the CJEU on the DMA's interaction with national gatekeeper rules would delay certainty by a year or more, but would produce an answer binding all member states.
- How the court characterises Section 19a. Whether it views the provision as complementing the DMA or as a rival regime shapes every pending German case against large platforms.
The pro-innovation position is not hostility to enforcement against self-preferencing and price-suppression. It is a preference for clear lines of authority and for remedies tailored to demonstrated harm. The Bundeskartellamt's allowance for action against grossly disproportionate pricing is an example of the latter. The BGH can supply the former. Whichever way it rules, a reasoned decision on competence will serve the single market better than leaving it to be settled by a succession of conflicting orders.
A caution on scope: this article is based on the BGH and Bundeskartellamt press releases and on legal commentary. We have not reviewed the full text of the decision, and the BGH has not ruled.