The sweet&sour taste of tourism and competition law interaction Margarida Rosado da Fonseca1 I. Preliminary remarks. 1. Object of the contribution. 2. The tourism sector in the wider EU context. – II. A bird’s eye on the application of competition rules. – III. A glimpse of the main areas of competition and examples. 1. “Restrictive practices” and “abuses of dominance”. 1.1. Unlawful arrangements between undertakings and decisions of associations. 1.2. Dominance and abusive practices. 1.3. Concentrations between undertakings and regulatory approval. 1.4. State aid rules and the tourism sector. 1.5. The scope of competition rules and Services of general economic interest. – IV. Final remarks. – V. Updated remarks. This contribution develops the presentation made during the 2022 ESHTE – INATEL International Conference on the growing importance of the advocacy and enforcement of Competition Law in the tourism sector, alongside a set of very different areas of law which are traditionally considered relevant for the same sector. Besides systematizing the main features of the various areas within Competition law for the purposes of context, this contribution includes examples concerning each one of them and particular references to the Portuguese competition framework. At a time when the competition dynamics of the tourism sector caught the enforcers’ attention and action notably concerning the market power of digital platforms and commercial arrangements of different sorts, this contribution aims at reiterating the advantageous outcome of a preventive approach concerning this area of law in the tourism sector. Keywords: Competition, state aid, antitrust, merger control, SGEI, tourism, digital, preventive, consumers, travelling, hospitality, airlines, Competition Authority, European Commission. DOI 10.60559/ijtthl2025-010 1 Secretary-General of the Portuguese Association for European Law.
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