HOTELS X ONLINE TRAVEL AGENCIES 503 When judging the HRS appeal, the Dusseldorf Regional High Court concluded that the first condition was not present since it had not clearly demonstrated the efficiency resulting from the parity clause, so it did not even analyse the other three conditions. The second versant, from Italy, Sweden and France, in turn, considers that the restricted clause would, on the one hand, remove competitive concerns, protecting the OTAs from the hitch-hiking effect and, on the other, allow greater competition among them; consequently, a higher fluctuation in the prices offered to consumers. With this understanding, and in cooperation with the European Commission, they accepted9, in April 2015, a commitment proposed by Booking to only use restricted parity clauses in their contracts, voluntarily extended, in July of the same year, to the other EU countries, which was followed by Expedia. Unlike Germany, it was concluded that, even with the restricted parity clauses’ boundaries, the sales portion of hotels in their own channels is not so high that it discourages the offer on OTAs platforms, at prices lower than those published on their own websites. It also concluded that the total absence of parity would cause a real risk of a hitch-hiking effect on the online hotel bookings market. In addition to these antitrust measures, France, in August 2015, and Austria, in November 2016, prohibited, under local laws, the use of any parity clause by OTAs. In September 2016, within the scope of the investigation initiated in the previous year, the Australian Antitrust Authority entered into an agreement with Booking and Expedia, which lead to the adoption of restricted parity clauses, terms that, in October 2016, would also be applied by the New Zealand Antitrust Authority. VI. THE OTAS COMMITMENT PROPOSALS The OTAs, in their proposed Consent Decree Terms, have agreed to cease the use of wide parity clauses in their commercial relations with the hotels, as follows: 9 Respectively, http://www.agcm.it/trasp-statistiche/doc_download/4809-i779chiusura.html, http://www. konkurrensverket.se/globalassets/english/news/13_596_bookingdotcom_eng.pdf and http://www.autoritedelaco ncurrence.fr/pdf/avis/15d06.pdf.
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