Amazon closes warehouses, no deliveries in France

Nanterre’s court ordered the company on Tuesday to only deliver essential products such as food, medical or hygiene products.

If this was not respected, the company would be condemned to €1million for each offence per day.

Many items are classified as essential on the Amazon website but may not in fact be considered essential under the court rules. Examples include hair dye products and nail clippers which are in the hygiene category but are not deemed essential.

However, following the order Amazon announced that it is closing its warehouses in France, for five days, until April 20, to see if it is possible for security measures to be put in place for deliveries to restart after this.

Deliveries are therefore suspended and it is not known when they will re-start.

The company is appealing the court decision which comes after complaints from unions asking Amazon to stop or at least reduce activity.

However, sellers on Amazon who do not stock their products at Amazon’s warehouses can continue to deliver orders directly to customers.

Amazon employees have been asked to stay at home and will benefit from short-term unemployment benefit (chômage partiel) with the company making up the rest of their salary.