344 COMPETITION LAW IN TOURISM objectively justified by any general interest needs, thus ending up clashing with the national and European Union law. In fact, ICA highlighted the discriminatory nature of certain time limitations regarding the working hours of guesthouses and bed and breakfasts in a non- -business form, as they only imposed particularly extended periods of inactivity for some types of facilities, and only if their management took place in a non- -business form. For this reason, ICA held that these constraints constituted an unjustified restriction of the freedom of economic initiative, not proportionate and discriminatory, as they referred only to some categories of non-hotel structures. Furthermore, in terms of the management of the occasional bed-and- -breakfast activity, ICA reaffirmed that the aforementioned limitations also have an anticompetitive relevance, as they forbid operators from freely organising their economic activity in the form that best accommodates their needs. Moreover, these limitations are not necessary and proportionate to the pursuit of general interest objectives, an underlying premise to the rules on the liberalisation of services provided at a national and EU level. The Authority reached similar conclusions for a series of structural constraints included in the Regulation, such as the obligation for non-hotel facilities to comply with a series of regulatory provisions on the safety and suitability of the premises, their technical-structural and hygienic-sanitary features, as well as their accessibility. In this regard, the Authority stated that introducing constraints on the ongoing economic activity is, in general, likely to constitute an unjustified restriction, able to alter or limit the competitive dynamics and the competitive capacity of the various operators, unless the actual arrangement of these constraints meets reasonable needs and takes proportions into consideration. In fact, the criteria required for non-hotel facilities cannot be the same required for housing construction. The Authority also identified further critical issues in a series of functional constraints included in the Regulation, mostly consisting of minimum performance quality standards, service quality and equipment – standards that facilities and managers need to meet in order to be assigned to a specific quality class. ICA considered the imposition of various and numerous functional requirements unreasonable, disproportionate and unnecessary, since they refer to elements that can and should help differentiate the offer and drive the choices by users of non-hotel accommodations. Therefore, these standards should be freely determined by the undertakings, according to the preferences expressed by
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