The Govern from Generalitat and the Catalan tourism sector have shown this Monday their disagreement with the sentence of the supreme court that exempts Airbnb to remove advertisements for illegal tourist accommodation. The Department of Business and LaborCONFECAT, PIMEC Turisme, Foment, Acave, Turalcat and the Catalan Federation of Campsites have expressed their disagreement with the Supreme Court ruling that annuls the order of the General Directorate of Tourism of 2015 that forced Airbnb to remove more than 14,000 ads from tourist housing that were not registered in the Register of Turisme de Catalunya. The registration number is mandatory according to Catalan regulations to identify establishments and as a guarantee of legality.
The tourism sector and the Government consider that the sentence “negatively affects the companies that carry out their activity legally, the local communities, the tourists themselves and the administrations”, considering that the requirement did not imply “excessive control” over the business.
The Government considers that the obligation to publish the identification number of the Register of Catalonia as marked by Catalan law, it is an appropriate measure since that registration code is a certificate of legality. While the legal framework has been applied, tens of thousands of advertisements have been required to be withdrawn from operators. Likewise, it has opened 1,706 sanctioning files once morest people who carried out their accommodation activity in homes irregularly. Of these, 1,530 were resolved with the imposition of fines of between 3,001 and 30,000 euros, with a total amount that exceeds 9.2 million euros.
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In the regulatory field, the Government announces that “it will defend the Catalan position in the changes that are being made in the future European law on Digital Services (Digital Services Act) that modifies the Electronic Commerce Directive 2000/31 referred to in the judgment of the Supreme Court”. Also in the normative field, he will defend that the future European regulation of short-term accommodation “define equitable and fair conditions for all economic actors.”
For the ‘conselleria’ it is basic that the European and state regulations are endowed with principles that ensure that the regional and local administrations have the instruments to order the activity in their territory. In this sense, he believes that future regulatory changes will have to ensure this fit given the real impact that the rental of tourist homes has. The General Directorate of Tourism announces that it will continue to inform the platforms of the illegal content that they host following the formula that has marked the judicial pronouncement of the Supreme Court and will insist that the platform assume the removal of this content.
