SNCF Wants Its 2014 Commitments Revisited By French Regulator

SNCF, which undertook commitments before the Autorité de la concurrence in 2014 concerning the terms of train ticket sales online, is now requesting for them to be revised, arguing that the competitive situation has since changed.

Following a complaint submitted by travel agencies, in 2014 SNCF made commitments before the Autorité to allow travel agencies to compete on equal terms with the subsidiary for the online sale of train tickets voyages-sncf.com

The travel agencies AS Voyages[1], Karavel and Lastminute had reported practices by SNCF aiming to favor its subsidiary voyages-sncf.com (which then became Oui.sncf in December 2017) in the sale of train tickets, to the detriment of competing travel agencies. In order to address the competition concerns raised by the Autorité, SNCF accepted a set of twelve commitments intended to place its subsidiary voyages-sncf.com and competing travel agencies on an equal footing.

Since that decision, travel agencies have benefited from conditions equivalent to those of voyages-sncf.com, in particular with regard to billing, payment and access to information.

The commitments open up the possibility for SNCF to request a revision of commitments in the event of “changes to the competitive landscape in the train ticket distribution and passenger rail transport markets”. It was within this framework that SNCF submitted its request.

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