Luxembourg, 05/06/2002 (Agence Europe) - On Thursday, the Court of First Instance (CFI) will pass down a ruling in the Airtours versus the Commission case in which the British travel agent disputes the decision by the Commission which in September 1999 refused it the right to take over First Choice Holidays. The Commission considered that the operation would have given rise to a "collective dominant position" of the three remaining travel agents: Thomas Cook, Thomson and Airtours (see EUROPE of 23 September 1999).
According to the Commission, the disappearance of First Choice would have created a market structure where the three aforementioned companies, vertically integrated, would have held a collective dominant position. Which Airtours disputes which, still in 1999, attacked the Commission before the CFI. The latter will say if the Commission was right or if it was wrong in refusing to approve the merger.
Out of a dozen cases of concentration on which the European CFI is currently working, the Airtours case is certainly one of the more important ones, experts point out: the Commission took a stance that was not to everyone's liking. Its reasoning was to say that, with three on the British travel market, the companies would have increased their prices without it even being necessary to concert: the very structure of the market they dominated enabled them to increase their prices by simple parallel and unilateral decisions. European legal circles expect the Commission's decision to be annulled by the European judges.