The ministry said in early August that it wanted to fix the problem by the end of the year, by changing the legislation if necessary. "It is interesting to see who adapts to whom in the world of IT."

The ministry has said that Slovenian companies cannot sell on Amazon because the online retail giant would have to make technical changes to their website in order to meet the requirements of Slovenia's act on the prevention of money laundering and funding of terrorism.

However, the paper cites two sources as saying that Slovenian legislation was too complex for Amazon. Moreover, the sources said that Amazon did not spend much time racking their brains with this problem and simply crossed Slovenia from the list of countries able to sell on the platform.

Some of the companies solved the problem by incorporating firms in the UK, but Amazon started to keep a close eye on non-residents after it realised that money launderers based in the UK were using its platform.

Sellers who were not UK citizens were either suspended by Amazon or their accounts were frozen. Therefore, Slovenian companies selling via Amazon decided to set up shop in Germany. This proved to be easy enough but requires EUR 25,000 in starting capital.

The paper highlights another problem faced by small IT markets like Slovenia's: a market of two million is not a priority for IT giants such as Amazon, Microsoft, Google and many others.

Slovenian Xbox users cannot use the platform's payable services unless they change their IP address to trick the system. Many services provided by Google only reach Slovenia with great delay or not at all, the paper says, listing several other examples.

The damage that occurs is high: Slovenian users cannot access services, while companies are stripped of business opportunities and lagging behind the digitally more developed countries, the paper says under the headline Jeff Bezos Doesn' Understand Slovenian Law.