Paris wants 12.5 million euros from Airbnb for illegal housing ads

The Paris authorities filed a lawsuit against Airbnb, accusing him of violating the rules regarding the published rental ads. The service can pay a fine of 12.5 million euros.

Currently, France is the second largest market for Airbnb in the world after the United States. In contrast, Paris is a city with the largest offer of real estate on the site, currently their number exceeds 65 thousand. apartments and houses.

Now, the Paris authorities have filed a lawsuit against Airbnb in which they accuse the site of breaking the law. It is about provisions introduced in 2018, according to which in Paris it is not allowed to rent real estate for a period of more than 120 days in one year. In order to be able to control compliance with these regulations, rental announcements on platforms such as Airbnb must have appropriate registration numbers.

Paris officials have come to the conclusion that Airbnb did not meet this condition in the case of a thousand flat offers in the French capital. The ads were devoid of registration data, and thus, according to the authorities of Paris, Airbnb broke the law.

The consequence of these applications is the above-mentioned lawsuit. The provisions provide for penalties in the amount of 12.5 thousand. euro for each ad, which in the case of Airbnb can mean a total fine of EUR 12.5 million.

Airbnb spokesman quoted by Reuters claims that the service is ready to adapt to existing regulations, but according to Airbnb, the detailed implementing rules applied by Paris proved to be unclear and difficult to apply in the light of general EU regulations.

In the autumn of last year Airbnb announced that, in accordance with the European Commission's requests, it will present clearly the costs of renting the presented real estate in all local versions of its website. Users will also receive appropriate tools to enforce their rights related to services provided by Airbnb.

We don't know yet what will be the solution of this problem. Airbnb helps millions of people to share or rent their apartments or properties to other people who travel around the world. However, the company starts facing such a problem a lot. Most of the authorities of the cities and countries do not like this application much. It is very interesting, but even in the United States, there are many states you can find that Airbnb is facing problems with the rules or regulations.

We will see what happen next.