Arjan van Oosterhout has been contributing to Ecommerce News Europe since the spring of 2023. He writes news articles for the website on a freelance basis.
Arjan is an experienced journalist in the field of ecommerce. After his student days in Utrecht, he began his career in 2004 at the South African newspaper, the Cape Argus, in Cape Town. Upon his return to the Netherlands, Arjan transitioned into trade journalism. He worked for MarketingTribune and, since 2008, served as an editor and later editor-in-chief of Twinkle, a well-known Dutch trade publication on digital commerce. He was also closely involved with the Twinkle100, an annual study of the largest online retailers in the Netherlands.
Since 2020, Arjan has been an independent entrepreneur. Under the company name Bureau AvO, he works for various journalistic and commercial clients, contributing to articles, magazines, books, and conferences, always at the intersection of content and commerce.
Amazon is bringing its ‘no-return’ solution for sellers using Fulfilment by Amazon (FBA) to Europe. When customers request a refund, they get their money back without having to return the item.
Customs authorities and other enforcement agencies in the EU intercepted a record 196 million suspected counterfeit items last year, with a total estimated value of 6.3 billion euros. That is 67 percent more than in 2024.
German SMEs generated more than 20 billion euros in sales through Amazon last year. Of this amount, 5.9 billion euros came from cross-border sales, according to the company. France, Austria, Italy, the United States and Spain were the main export markets.
The government of the United Kingdom wants to make marketplaces responsible for collecting VAT on sales by larger domestic sellers. The proposed measure could raise up to 1 billion pounds a year for the Treasury, with the additional revenue intended to fund tax cuts for high street businesses.
The European Commission is working on a new fee for packages from outside the EU. This surveillance fee is intended to facilitate better product inspections. The fee will be in addition to the 3-euro import duty and the upcoming 2-euro fee for customs clearance.
Including its marketplace, Amazon has a 63 percent share of Germany’s online retail market. Almost all German online shoppers buy from Amazon, which also has a major impact on physical retail. The company directly or indirectly influences 41 percent of German spending in the product categories studied.
TikTok Shop generates far more sales in the United Kingdom than in other European countries. This year, the platform’s gross merchandise value (GMV) in its pioneering European market is expected to rise to almost 5 billion euros.
As of today, Austria has introduced a national levy of 2 euros per parcel for large online sellers. The measure applies to online stores and marketplaces generating more than 100 million euros in annual sales to customers in the country. Thousands of other businesses are affected indirectly. Resistance to the levy is therefore considerable.
Growth in online consumer spending in Europe is slowing down. For the current year, Ecommerce Europe and EuroCommerce expect growth of 5 percent in nominal terms. The growth engine in Eastern Europe is grinding to a halt.
Sellers no longer primarily measure their success on marketplaces by sales volumes, but by the returns they generate. Profit margin has overtaken net sales as the top success metric, while almost half of sellers (49 percent) added two or three new marketplaces over the past year.
Temu has broken into the top 10 online retailers in almost every European country. In four countries, the platform owned by China’s PDD Holdings even ranks first, according to ECDB, based on its 2025 data. Worth noting that none of these countries has a local Amazon storefront or a major domestic marketplace.
Product carousels have almost entirely disappeared from Google’s shopping-related search results in the European Economic Area (EEA). For online retailers, a large part of their visibility in organic Shopping results has abruptly vanished.
Allegro plans to make selected tools and services available to selling partners for use outside its marketplace. These include logistics, financial and advertising solutions. Partners will be able to use them to boost sales in their own online stores.
Amazon has seen the number of recipients of its shopping services in the European Union decline slightly. In the first half of this year, the company reported an average of 193.9 million recipients per month, down from 195.2 million in the second half of last year.
Bol increased its lead over Amazon last year, according to a new ECDB ranking of ecommerce in the Netherlands. While the Dutch market leader recorded strong growth, Amazon.nl grew much more slowly.