Amazon Asks to Halt Daily Penalty Threat Over Data Rule Breach

Stephanie Bodoni, Bloomberg News

Packages move along a conveyor at an Amazon fulfillment center on Cyber Monday in Robbinsville, New Jersey, U.S., on Monday, Nov. 29, 2021. Adobe Digital Economy Index is expecting Cyber Monday to bring the biggest holiday shopping of the year, with consumers projected to spend between $10.2 billion and $11.3 billion. Photographer: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg , Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) -- Amazon.com Inc. asked a Luxembourg judge to suspend the threat of a daily fine on top of the record 746 million-euro ($842 million) penalty for violating the European Union’s stringent data-protection rules.

CNPD, the Luxembourg data protection authority, in July slapped Amazon with the hefty fine for processing personal data in violation of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR.

While payment of the fine has been halted pending Amazon’s appeal, the online retailer still faces a daily 746,000 euro fine if it fails to meet a Jan. 15 deadline to make a number of changes to their data processes, a judge was told Friday.

The CNPD’s order and the ultimatum given are “unrealistic,” because it’s not clear what changes are required, Thomas Berger, Amazon’s lawyer at Allen & Overy, said.

“We have no guidance about what we need to do, so how do we do it,” he said.

The Luxembourg watchdog won’t publish the decision until all appeals have been exhausted and just a few details have been made public in a regulatory filing by Amazon in July, which has said the findings are “without merit.”

The fine was the highest so far since GDPR took effect and watchdogs gained powers to levy fines of as much as 4% of a company’s annual global sales.

Amazon has its EU base in Luxembourg, which makes CNPD its lead data protection watchdog. Lawyers for the regulator said Friday that the daily fine won’t kick in automatically after Jan. 15.

The Luxembourg regulator will first check if all its concerns have been addressed and then will give a new decision, said the CNPD’s lawyer Vincent Wellens, who works at NautaDutilh. But, the regulator “is not a helpdesk for Amazon to tell them what to do” and “the decision is very clear,” he said.

The Amazon probe was triggered by a 2018 complaint from French privacy rights group La Quadrature du Net.