No Traction: Authorities Drop Antitrust Investigation Into Italy's Long-Term Car Rental Sector

In Short

The Situation: The Italian Competition Authority has closed an antitrust investigation into the alleged anticompetitive exchange of information by 16 operators in the long-term car rental market and their industry association.

The Result: The ICA, in an unprecedented decision, overturned the theory of harm put forward by its investigative team in its Statement of Objection—which found that the exchange of information constituted a hard-core restriction—and ultimately found that the practice did not breach EU competition rules.

The Investigation

The investigation was triggered by a customer complaint to the Italian Competition Authority ("ICA") about the alleged tendency of the major long-term car rental ("LTR") operators to offer very similar commercial terms to their clients and the practice of the LTR industry association, ANIASA, of distributing very granular reports containing each operator's sales data to its members.