competitionlaw

Following a report lodged by Federalberghi, an association regrouping the majority of Italian hotels, by a decision made on 7 th May 2014 the Italian Competition Authority (ICA) has opened an Article 101 TFEU investigation against two major Online Travel Agencies (OTA), Expedia and Booking ( Online Hotel Reservation ). The complainant reported that some clauses inserted in the agreements concluded by Expedia and Booking with their hotel partners, and namely the Most Favoured Nation (MFN) clauses, breached competition law. The ICA held that the relevant market was the Italian market for online hotel reservation. This was a very concentrated market where Booking and Expedia were respectively the first and second most important operators and together accounted for 75% of the online reservations. The ICA took the view that the contested MFN clauses prevented the partner hotels from offering on their own websites or through competing platforms and other channels better rates and condit...

Following a report lodged by a consumer association the Italian Competition Authority (ICA) has recently opened an investigation on a price-fixing agreement against six regional banks active in the northern province of Bolzano (Case I777 ). The relevant market affected by the contested agreement is the market for borrowing to families for the province of Bolzano. Indeed, according to the ICA decisional practice, the territorial scope for the market for borrowing to families is mainly local. The ICA believed that the six banks, which accounted for 40% of the relevant market, agreed to insert into floating-rate mortgage contracts a clause that consistently set the floor rate in the region of 3%. Such arrangement amounts to jointly decide a minimum price, reducing the price competition amongst the parties and leading to more onerous conditions for consumers. Finally, the ICA took the view that the contested agreement might infringe either the Italian Competition Act or Article 101...

In the recent Airportsof Verona and Brescia and Airportof Groningen cases the European Commission found that the financial aid measures granted by local authorities to, respectively, the manager of the airport of Brescia and Verona in Italy and of Groningen in the Netherlands, were compatible with the internal market. Airports of Verona and Brescia was decided on the basis of the 2005 Aviation Guidelines. The measure examined was an investment aid in the shape of a € 12.7 million capital injection into the manager of the airports to finance the building of new infrastructure. The aid beneficiary managed two regional airports. Verona had a traffic of approximately 3 million passengers and Brescia of 1 million. The airport of Brescia was also very active in the cargo sector. The Commission held that the aid was granted on the basis of a feasible business plan and that the public money was necessary to bridge a funding gap in the projects. Crucially, the measures did not distort c...