The Legal Impacts of COVID-19 in the Travel, Tourism and Hospitality Industry

unlikely to be justified. Efficiencies typically include consumer benefits such as new products, improved products, improved service or innovation; it is less clear whether parties can invoke other policy goals, such as sustainability, as a pro-consumer efficiency. The current Commission is very green if not greener. However, a company that relies on environmental benefits to justify conduct restrictive of competition needs a perfect script; otherwise this can become very expensive. EU competition law tolerates collaboration between competitors under defined conditions, such as in the area of joint research and development, joint production, joint purchasing, or joint commercialisation, distribution, standard-setting or technology transfer, to name a few. The underlying concept is that such collaboration creates efficiencies. Joint selling, where two competitors merely agree to channel their products through a joint sales agency, would likely be anticompetitive. Strictly unilateral conduct can also infringe competition law, but only if the company is dominant and the conduct amounts to abuse. Note that a company that has not been historically dominant can find itself in a dominant position due to COVID-19. To illustrate, in the past, short-haul holiday packages were in competition with long-haul holiday packages; however, COVID-19 might confer to suppliers of short-haul holiday packages increased market power, due to international travel restrictions and modified consumption patterns; a risk that all companies should assess. II.2.2. Mergers The second pillar of competition law is merger control. Mergers (a term that covers mergers, acquisitions of control and certain joint ventures) allow industries to consolidate, which typically occurs when there are too many players in an industry and not enough room in the market. Mergers between competitors receive more scrutiny than non-horizontal mergers, given that they are more likely to reduce competition by eliminating a supplier. They also reduce alternatives of choice for the consumer, may lead to price increases, less quality of products or services or innovation decrease. Although vertical and conglomerate mergers may lead to market foreclosure of other players under particular circumstances, they are less likely to harm competition and rarely receive