The ministerial decree of April 4 is not to Amazon’s taste: From October onwards, book orders on the Internet in France should only be postage free from 35 euros, before that at least three euros delivery costs should be charged. This is aimed at readers, publishers, authors and is to the detriment of French consumers, argues Amazon, whose business model is based on favorable delivery conditions. The online retailer announced at the end of June that it would contact the supreme administrative court to have the regulation reversed.
Actually, free delivery had already been banned in 2014: Amazon circumvented the problem by charging a token cent – a measure that observers took as a “pied de nez” as an attempt to thumb the legislature’s nose. This was followed by the “Darcos Law” of December 30, 2021, which is intended to help the stationary book trade more efficiently; said ordinance represents its implementation. The aim is to encourage people to buy books locally in order to ensure a dense network of bookshops. France currently has 3,500 independent bookshops, 20 percent of which are in central Paris; the country proudly claims to have the world’s densest network and wants it to stay that way. However, the European Commission has expressed clear doubts about the procedure: France has failed to prove that a minimum postage is conducive to the goal.