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

thorough scrutiny. However, with the emerging theories of harm linked to the digital era, vertical mergers may be scrutinised more intensively than in the past. Methodologically, regulators deciding on a planned merger make a forecast: how is the transaction merger likely to affect competition over the next 3 to 5 years? Obviously, this is not an exact science, leaving room for economic arguments and lobbying stakeholders. Again, it is not entirely clear how other policy goals, such as sustainability, can be invoked to justify a merger that is likely to be anticompetitive. Innovation, by contrast, is mentioned in the EU Merger Regulation, and the Commission is wary of mergers that are likely to limit innovation (a concern occurring predominantly in research-based industries). II.2.3. State Aid In the EU, contrary to most countries around the world, State aid (government support) is a legal issue. When the founding fathers set up the first European Community, they knew too well the historic pattern subsidy races, whereby national governments supported their national champions to bolster their international competitiveness. The EU Treaty established the principle that, in order to create a level playing field in the Single Market, any national aid must be in line with the Treaty objectives and be approved in one form or another by the European Commission. The reality is that State aid for the tourism sector can be – and has been – granted for several reasons, including regional development, sector development, sustainability reasons and many others. There are many ways of “slotting” such aid into the system 7 . III. The New World: Post-COVID-19 III.1. The Competitive Environment The author’s personal assessment, based on the currently available information, is that, for the next couple of years, the competitive environment will change, but not entirely. Indeed, we witness an unprecedented challenge to the global economy, but there is also much 7 See Bertold Bär-Bouyssière’s commentary on EU State aid law (Articles 107-109 TFEU), in German language, that can be found in: EU-Kommentar, Nomos, 4 th edition, 2019, a collective work initiated and edited by Professor Jürgen Schwarze of Freiburg University.