On May 3, 2016, the Lithuanian Supreme Administrative Court (LSAC) largely upheld fines originally imposed by the Lithuanian competition authority on travel agency users of an online booking system. The authority had fined several agencies for concerted practices related to a common online travel reservation system. The operator of the reservation platform had sent the travel agents participating in the system an electronic message capping the rebates that could be granted for products sold via the system and had technically adapted the system so as to implement this cap. The authority found this to constitute an illegal information exchange. The case ultimately went on appeal to the EU's highest court (the European Court of Justice) which held that travel agents which knew the content of the message could be presumed to have participated in an illegal concerted practice, unless they had distanced themselves from the message, challenged its imposition or adduced other evidence to rebut the presumption, such as systematically granting higher rebates than those set under the cap. The LSAC in its ruling was applying this judgment to the facts of the case. It dropped the charges against some agencies for lack of evidence that they that they were aware of the discount restrictions but upheld the fines against all of the other agencies (with some reductions). It is pertinent to note that the dissemination of any type of restriction, suggestion or recommendation in relation to pricing and other competitive issues, or indeed pure information exchange on competitive parameters, between competitors is dangerous under competition law in the EU.
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