COMPETITION PROTECTION IN THE TOURISM SECTOR IN ITALY 341 strictly necessary, in order to protect the prevailing interests that the legislator intends to pursue each time. 3.2. From this perspective, ICA intervened several times using the powers provided by the articles 21, 22 and 21-bis of the law no. 287/1990, to ensure that the production of regional legislation on tourism effectively respects the principles and rules of competition. In a multilevel governance system such as the one described above, any administrative body (national, regional and local) can potentially introduce regulatory barriers that disproportionately prevent the actions of competitive forces and dynamics within the markets. The advocacy function in the tourism sector represents a very significant part of the ICA institutional activity. This importance was also underlined recently by the jurisprudence of the Council of State, which specified how such a function “constitutes one of the procedures established by law to repress antitrust conducts”, and that it “addresses the need to correct the distortions of the competitive functioning of the considered market, by signalling any regulatory issue to the competent Authorities – and, if properly used, constitutes an extremely effective and useful tool to amend the market from those distortions”21. 3.3. ICA, in fact, has repeatedly intervened on regional tourism regulations over the years, exercising its institutional function of safeguarding competition. With regard to the most recent interventions, the reports and opinions adopted by the Authority under articles 21 and 22 of l. 287/1990 about competition restrictions deriving from existing laws or drafts surpassed a hundred in 2017 alone. Of these, sixteen specifically concerned the tourism sector22. In 2018, on the other hand, eighty-four reports and opinions were adopted by the Authority. Of these, thirteen concerned the tourism sector23. Finally, in 2019 the Authority adopted eighty-one advocacy interventions, four of which in the tourism sector24. 3.4. In particular, in the last three years, ICA based various reports and opinions on the articles 21, 21-bis and 22 of law no. 287/90, highlighting many limitations of the exercise of, or access to, commercial activities that were not justified by 21 See Council of State, judgment no. 1708/2017. 22 See Annual Report of ICA, in Authority’s Official Bulletin (hereinafter, Bull.), 2018. 23 See Annual Report of ICA, in Bull., 2019. 24 See Annual Report of ICA, in Bull, 2020.
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