Amazon check

France has approved a bill to support independent bookstores against competition from online retailers. The new law will restrict companies like Amazon from combining offers of five per cent discounts with free deliveries.

France’s 3,000 independent bookshops have complained that they can’t compete with the cut-price offers online.

The opposition UMP proposed the bill, which also has the support of the left. According to BBC’s Paris correspondent Christian Fraser, the law “might be seen as payback for Amazon’s practices of reporting European sales through a Luxembourg holding company, to take advantage of comparatively low corporate tax rates.”

French Culture Minister Aurelie Filippetti said, “Everyone has had enough of Amazon, which, by dumping, slashes prices to get a foothold in markets only to raise them once they have established a virtual monopoly.”