On 13 March 2026, the Belgian Competition Authority (“BCA”) announced the opening of an investigation into practices implemented by AutoScout24 Belgium (“AutoScout24”) through its intermediation platform AutoScout24.be, on the basis of alleged abuse of a dominant position.
AutoScout24 operates an online platform and a mobile application for the sale of second-hand automotive vehicles. The investigation was triggered by a complaint concerning practices that may restrict the portability of data entered on the platform by professional sellers. According to the BCA, such restrictions could discourage sellers from “multi-homing”, i.e. using several competing platform services in parallel. Multi-homing may play a key role in mitigating network effects and the market power of large digital platforms. Allowing professional users and consumers to switch or operate across multiple platforms without significant costs or obstacles promotes competition, lowers entry barriers for newer players and supports innovation.
The investigation was triggered by a complaint from TCS Mobility (“TCS”), a new market entrant operating the platform carselect.touring.be, which competes with AutoScout24.be. According to TCS, AutoScout stopped the automated transfer of data from AutoScout24.be to its platform carselect.touring.be. Consequently, professional dealers that wish to publish an ad on carselect.touring.be have to re-enter the data manually.
TCS also filed a request for interim measures seeking to restore the automated transfer of sellers’ ad data to its platform pending the decision on the merits.
On 30 April 2026, the BCA decided to impose interim measures ordering AutoScout24 to restore the portability of sellers’ ad data from its platform to the competing platform carselect.touring.be. Indeed, the BCA held that AutoScout24 could prima facie be considered dominant under Article IV.2 of the Belgian Code of Economic Law and Article 102 TFEU, considering the importance of its platform for the publication of classified ads for second-hand cars in Belgium.
The BCA then assessed AutoScout24’s decision to stop the automated transfer of vehicle data entered on its platform to carselect.touring.be. It concluded that there was prima facie abuse of dominance under Belgian and European competition law. Indeed, AutoScout24 normally allows such transfers from its platform to other websites, including competing ones. However, when TCS added a new pricing model for the publication of ads on carselect.touring.be (charging for “clicks” or “leads” generated by an ad “pay-per-lead” model, rather than a “pay-per-list” model), AutoScout24 terminated the automated data transfers to the TCS platform. AutoScout24 seems to want to specifically block TCS and its new pricing model.
Finally, the BCA found that AutoScout24’s decision was likely to cause serious and irrevocable harm to TCS, which justified interim measures, as the requirement to manually enter data twice would deter new customers. TCS is a new entrant to this market and needs to reach a critical mass of ads and visitors in order to remain active in the market.
The BCA ordered AutoScout24 to restore the automated transfer of vehicle data encoded on its platform by car dealers to TCS’s platform carselect.touring.be, subject to a penalty payment of EUR 20,000 per day, up to a maximum of EUR 7,000,000. In addition, AutoScout24 must inform all of its professional clients that it allows the transfer of data from its platform to carselect.touring.be, as well as the continuous and real-time updating of that data.
AutoScout24 may appeal this decision before the Market Court.
The digital sector is one of the BCA’s priority enforcement sectors as confirmed in its Priorities paper for 2026, published on 26 February 2026.
