HOTELS X ONLINE TRAVEL AGENCIES 507 is detrimental to competition, CADE shall have the right to initiate further investigations to determine the potential effects of the restrictive parity clause. VII.2. Failure to Comply with TCC and Applicable Penalties The fulfillment of the obligation assumed in the proposals shall, in summary, be as follows: a) in up to 60 days, the hotels shall be notified of the obligation and, within 10 days, all existing contracts (including through waiver of any existing relevant clauses) shall be added to suit it. b) for this purpose, it shall be enough for the hotel to click on “I agree” with the update of the Terms and Conditions of the Services, that will be made available to it and sent by e-mail. Furthermore if, at any time during the TCCs’ term, the partial or total failure to comply with the obligations assumed is proven, the process shall be redone and may result in fines provided for therein. Lastly, the financial contribution to the Fund for the Defense of Diffuse Rights (FDD) was waived, as there was no legal obligation to collect them in the case, given that the investigation did not deal with an agreement between competitors. Besides, the TCC proposals were made a few months after the beginning of the Administrative Investigation, showing the OTAs’ interest in solving the potential competitive problem. Additionally, it is a solution that follows similar agreements executed with other authorities in several countries where the contribution was waived, being, therefore, reasonable to accept a similar condition in Brazil. VIII. CADE’S CONCLUSION On the one hand, CADE believes that the imposition of parity clauses may reduce competition in the market by decreasing incentives to competition among OTAs and by requiring similar pricing practices that prevent better trading conditions, such as price and commission fees, to be passed on to final consumers in the form of lower prices. Likewise, the parity clauses are a major obstacle to the entry of new competitors, as they also render ineffective any market entry strategy that
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