EU institutions finalise rulebook for travel tech platforms

EU lawmakers reached a deal in the early hours of Thursday (16 November) to regulate data-sharing of short-term rental platforms like Airbnb, Booking.com and Expedia.

The short-term rental regulation is meant to introduce clear data-sharing requirements for travel tech platforms and harmonise administrative procedures across the bloc. The EU Council and Parliament, the co-legislators, reached a political agreement on the bill after two rounds of inter-institutional negotiation.

“Cities are struggling with an explosion of illegal holiday rentals. […] Until now, rental platforms have refused to share data, making it difficult to enforce local regulations. Fortunately, this law puts an end to that,” stated Parliament’s rapporteur of the text Kim van Sparrentak.

In this regard, van Sparrentak pushed the “compliance by design” principle, which made it into the agreement, despite initial resistance from EU countries on the proportionality of this measure.

The compromise was found in allowing accommodation hosts to self-declare their listing on short-term rental platforms, and, to prevent any illegal listing, online platforms will have to make “best efforts” to check the completeness and reliability of the information provided.

Moreover, platforms will have to conduct random checks on the listing they host, while administrative authorities will conduct checks based on data provided monthly by Airbnb, Booking, Trivago, Expedia and the likes.

Interplay between authorisation schemes and registration procedures

The political meeting dragged on until late at night, mainly because of intense discussions on the interplay between authorisation schemes and registration procedures.

Considering that registration numbers would be delivered automatically, the Council negotiators wanted to give the opportunity to EU countries to stop the automatic issuance of registration numbers if they were able to prove that a specific registration number was requested in an area where short-term rental was prohibited. This would be the case for social housing buildings, for instance.

The Commission found this provision contradictory to the Services Directive, which sets market access rules. Eventually, the Council provisions were agreed upon, while putting in the text that authorisation checks and market access rules were matters of the Services Directive.

Fighting illegal listing

If a host fails to comply with local rules, national authorities will be empowered to suspend and eventually withdraw a registration number and demand online platforms to take down a listed unit.

A “right to be heard” approach was added in the text to make the withdrawal process consistent with the Digital Services Act, the EU regulation on illegal content online, which gives hosts a right to defend themselves in cases of negligence or misuse of registration numbers, for instance.

Moreover, it was agreed that once a host decides to stop renting a unit, national authorities can store the subsequent data for a maximum of 18 months, following the Parliament proposition. This provision gives local authorities an additional six month of storage than the provisions set in the General Data Protection Regulation.

Single Digital Entry Points

The Single Digital Entry Points, the IT infrastructure where short-term rental platforms should deliver the data to administrative authorities monthly, were also a highly debated point.

A last change has been to make this provision more flexible, with the smallest short-term rental platforms having to transmit their data quarterly, instead of monthly. The threshold for platforms to quality was set at less than 2,500 listings.

Eventually, member states where registration procedures apply somewhere on their territory will have to set up Single Digital Entry Points platforms within two years from the regulation’s entry into force.

The Commission has already been working on standardising the Single Digital Entry Points, and now the text reads that the EU executive should ensure these entry points share a common Application Programming Interface (API).

Furthermore, the Commission may now take implementing acts to ensure interoperability between the Single Digital Entry Points.

Lastly, all 27 countries will have to appoint a national coordinator, contrary to the Council proposal, to make the disposition compliant with rules on expert groups, as the Commission reminded the co-legislators.

Definitions

The definition of “active hosts” was deleted and left to national legislative frameworks, following the Council’s wish that this regulation standardise data-sharing instead of modifying existing national legislation.

Next steps

The current agreement must be adopted by the Council of the EU and European Parliament before it becomes law. The Parliament’s committee meeting is set for 4 December, with the plenary vote scheduled in January.

“Finally we achieved a level playing field in the EU rental sector, this solution was long overdue,” Barbara Thaler, shadow rapporteur of the text for the centre-right party (EPP), told Euractiv.

Looking at EU influence in the world, Airbnb’s co-founder Nathan Blecharczyk said: “The new rules will serve as a global example of how to regulate short-term rentals and give clear guidance to platforms and authorities on important matters, including how to share data and make local rules work for everyone”.

[Edited by Luca Bertuzzi/Nathalie Weatherald]

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