Press Release: Antitrust: Commission probes certain co-operation agreements between Lufthansa and Turkish Airlines and between Brussels Airlines and TAP Air Portugal

The European Commission has opened two own initiative investigations, to verify whether code-share agreements - a particular form of co-operation on ticket sales, implemented, in one case, between Deutsche Lufthansa (Germany) and Turkish Airlines (Turkey) and, in the second case, between TAP Portugal (Portugal) and Brussels Airlines (Belgium), is in breach of EU rules on anti-competitive agreements (Article 101 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union). While code-share agreements can provide substantial benefits to passengers, some types of such agreements may also produce anti-competitive effects. These investigations focus on a particular type of code sharing arrangement where these airlines have agreed to sell seats on each others' flights on the Germany-Turkey routes and on the Belgium-Portugal routes, where both companies already operate their own flights between their own hubs ("parallel hub-to-hub code-sharing") and should, in principle, be competing with each other. An initiation of proceedings does not imply that the Commission has conclusive proof of an infringement. It means that the Commission will investigate the case as a matter of priority.