Dominant market position: €255.8 million fine for Ryanair in Italy

The Italian competition authority has against Ryanair DAC and its parent company Ryanair Holdings were fined around 255.8 million euros. The reason is the abuse of a dominant market position in the period from April 2023 to at least April 2025.

Ryanair said in a statement that it had instructed lawyers to “immediately appeal against the absurd and untenable verdict and the unjustified fine.”

As part of an extensive investigation, the authority found that Ryanair had pursued a strategy to make it more difficult or economically unattractive for travel agencies to sell Ryanair flights – especially in combination with flights from other airlines or additional tourism and insurance services.

Booking attempts by travel agencies affected

At the end of 2023, travel agencies temporarily blocked booking attempts completely or partially, for example by blocking payment methods or mass deleting user accounts. At the beginning of 2024, Ryanair finally imposed partnership agreements on travel agencies that limited their offering options.

It was not until April 2025 that Ryanair made a complete technical interface (API) available to online travel agencies, which the authority believes will enable fair competitive conditions in the tourism market again. Until then, the measures had demonstrably impaired competition and limited the range of products available to consumers, the authority said.

According to the authority, Ryanair occupies a dominant position in the market for scheduled flights to and from Italy. The low-cost airline has a market share of 38 to 40 percent of the passengers carried on Italian routes. This position gives the company significant market power over travel agencies.