Booking Holdings—EU General Court upheld Commission's block of Booking.com's EUR1.63B acquisition of eTraveli over ecosystem foreclosure concerns
The EU General Court rejected Booking.com's appeal of the European Commission's 2023 prohibition of its EUR1.63 billion ($1.90 billion) acquisition of flight-booking group eTraveli. The Commission had found the deal would strengthen Booking.com's dominant position in the hotel online-travel-agency market and let it foreclose rival flight-and-hotel bundling competitors, even though the merger would have increased Booking's market share by only a few tenths of a percent. The court found errors in the Commission's market-share calculations but left the prohibition in force.
Scoring Impact
| Topic | Direction | Relevance | Contribution |
|---|---|---|---|
| Antitrust & Competition | -against | primary | -1.00 |
| Overall incident score = | -0.644 | ||
Score = avg(topic contributions) × significance (medium ×1) × confidence (0.64)
Evidence (2 signals)
Clifford Chance briefing: EU General Court upholds prohibition of Booking.com/eTraveli merger
Law firm Clifford Chance's client briefing analyzed the EU General Court judgment upholding the Commission's 2023 block of the EUR1.63 billion Booking.com/eTraveli acquisition on ecosystem-foreclosure grounds.
Reuters: EU court upholds antitrust veto of Booking's eTraveli deal
Reuters reported the EU General Court's rejection of Booking.com's appeal against the European Commission's prohibition of its acquisition of eTraveli, confirming the ecosystem-foreclosure rationale despite errors found in the Commission's market-share math.