340 COMPETITION LAW IN TOURISM and iv) the capacity of the tourism sector to be a tool for social development. Consequently it would require removing obstacles to the use of tourism services by the largest possible number of users (for example, we can look at all incentives, discounts and economic contributions received by young people). 2.8. From what has been analysed so far, it is clear that the competitive growth of tourism is crucial for national, regional and local economies. Therefore, ICA has acted strictly to eliminate the violations of competition law set up in the touristic field. III. ICA DECISIONS IN THE FIELD OF TOURISM Advocacy activity 3.1. An important area of intervention of ICA in the tourism sector focuses on those regulations that can reduce competition between companies, damage the dynamics between operators and therefore produce negative effects on consumers. The goal is strengthening the spread of the principle of free competition, in line with the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (article 119) and the Constitution – which establishes that state and regional laws must respect the constraints of the EU legal system, including the principles and rules of competition (article 117, paragraph 1). As was repeatedly stressed by the Constitutional Court, the “broad notion of competition referred to in the second paragraph, letter e), of art. 117 of the Constitution, (…) includes both regulatory measures that primarily affect competition (such as legislative protection interventions, which obstruct the acts and conduct of companies that threaten the competitive structure of the markets) and promotion measures, which aim for the opening or the consolidation of a market (by reducing the restrictions to the exercise of, and the access to, certain economic activities) and the free development of entrepreneurship and competition between companies”20. The ICA’s advocacy decisions on the matter are aimed not only at removing these barriers but also at suggesting to the legislator the most suitable and proportional solutions from a competitive point of view. The application of this test, in particular, makes it possible to circumscribe the introduction of anti-competitive restrictions and limit their scope to what is 20 See ex multis, Constitutional Court, judgment no. 265/2016 and no. 56/2020.
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