THE EUROPEAN UNION AND EUROPEAN STATES’ DEVELOPMENTS 493 In reviewing the appeal70, in May 2019, the review court ruled that the plaintiff did not prove that the action of the parity clauses actually harmed the competition, deciding to reform the first-degree court decision, as well as to stating the lack of a clear economic theory and complexity to better evaluate cases such as the so-called two-sided markets similar to these cases71. It is not possible to appeal to the Swedish Supreme Court72. 9. DENMARK Denmark has analysed the online booking platform market. After committing to change from broad to narrow parity clause in the entire European Economic Zone in July 2015, the Danish Competition and Consumer Authority (DCCA) produced a survey of the prices offered on the three large reservation platforms in Denmark (Booking.com, hotels.com and hrs.com) in July 201673; the study involved the three platforms and twelve hotels. For two months, the booking price of these hotels was monitored on the three platforms, and, as a result, four hotels charged the same price on all three platforms, two hotels had almost the same price, but the remaining six hotels had different prices on one or more platforms during most of the period. Moreover, on 9 March 2018, the Minister of Business Affaires submitted a study to the DCCA on the market conditions linked to accommodation booking platforms, as indicated in Art. 15(2), the final section in the Danish Competition Act. It allowed the participation of stakeholders, with questions and facts considered to be useful in this analysis74. As a consequence of this request, the study “Booking platform, hotels and consumers” was published75. One result of the study illustrates the number of bookings in Danish hotels contributing to the growth of the national hotel business and also reveals data on price 70 Reference number: PMT 7779-18. 71 BATISTA, Pedro Henrique D. et al. Narrow price parity clauses and restrictions of competition. GRUR International, v. 69, no. 2, 2020, pp. 197-203. 72 MOLDÉN, Robert, NILSSON, Henrik, & SABOCKIS, Dagne. Sweden. In KILPATRICK, Bruce, KOBEL, Pierre, & KËLLEZI, Pranvera (org.). Antitrust analysis of online sales platforms & copyright limitations and exceptions. Cham: Springer, 2018, p. 232. 73 Price competitionbetweenhotel-booking portals, available at https://www.en.kfst.dk/media/1783/20160706- -bookingportaler-engelsk.pdf. 74 Available at https://www.kfst.dk/pressemeddelelser/kfst/2018/20180309-bookingportalundersoegelse/. 75 Original title “Bookingplatforme, hoteller og forbrugere”, available at https://www.en.kfst.dk/media/ 53727/20190201-bookingplatforme-hoteller-og-forbrugere.pdf (in Danish only).
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