Paris Court Orders Airbnb to Pay 8.08 Million Euros Over 1,010 Listings

On 1 July 2021, the Paris judicial court (the Tribunal judiciaire de Paris) ordered Airbnb to pay the City of Paris 8,080,000 euros over 1,010 listings that had been published without the registration number French law required, the city announced the same day. The amount was 8,000 euros for each listing, according to a summary of the order published by the legal news site Le Monde du Droit, which said the court also awarded 10,000 euros in procedural costs.

From the same day, Airbnb required every host renting an entire home in Paris to show a registration number on the listing to receive new bookings for short stays. The company had set out that step in a newsroom post dated 30 June 2021.

What the court ordered

None of the sources cited here published the text of the order. This account draws on the city's press release, on Le Monde du Droit's summary dated 2 July 2021 and on a report by the news agency AFP that The Local France published on 1 July.

Le Monde du Droit described the decision as a summary order (an ordonnance de référé) dated 1 July 2021, with the case number RG 19/54288. By its account, the city had found that Airbnb disregarded article L. 324-2-1 of the French tourism code by not showing the declaration number required by law on 1,010 listings on its site. After the company refused to add a blocking field that would make the number compulsory, the summary said, the city went to court and asked for a fine of 12,500 euros per listing.

The court set the fine at 8,000 euros per listing, the summary said. AFP reported that the total was lower than the 12.5 million euros the city had sought.

On the reasoning, Le Monde du Droit's summary said the judge found a breach of the tourism code's obligations and weighed its seriousness, how long it had lasted and its effects on a public-interest goal: fighting the shortage of homes for rent in Paris. The summary said the judge held that the fine was meant to do more than approach the company's real or supposed gain from the 1,010 listings. It was also meant to penalize what the summary reported as a lack of civic responsibility on the part of a company whose business depended on Parisians making their homes available. Without the number, the summary said, the authorities could not verify, assess or penalize owners who broke the rules.

Why the number mattered

AFP reported that registration had been required since 2018 and served two purposes: holding each Paris home to no more than 120 rented nights a year, and seeing that the income was declared to the tax authorities. The case was filed in 2019, AFP said, after officials found 1,010 Paris listings without the numbers, which it said had been required since a law passed in 2017.

The city's release said Airbnb had gone on hosting listings for furnished tourist rentals without a registration number since 2018, although the law required one, and that from 2019 the city recorded infringements for 1,010 listings.

Until July 2021, AFP wrote, Airbnb “was not blocking renters who failed to supply the numbers with their ads”, and the company had argued that policing its users' compliance with local rules should not be its responsibility.

The two sides gave different pictures of how many listings lacked a number. AFP reported that Ian Brossat, the deputy mayor in charge of housing, claimed that more than half of the 30,000 Paris listings were not displaying registration numbers. The figure was his. AFP added that Airbnb had 65,000 listings for the city before the Covid pandemic.

What Airbnb changed and what it said

Airbnb's post, dated 30 June 2021 on its French newsroom, said that from 1 July the company was asking all hosts renting an entire home in Paris to put a registration number on their listings. It placed the step among commitments on responsible tourism that it had made in February 2021 to Emmanuelle Wargon, the housing minister. The number had been compulsory since 1 April for any new listing created in Paris, the post said, and the city's authorities would get access to Airbnb's City Portal to help them check compliance with local rules.

The company said compulsory registration and the portal would be rolled out in other large French cities by the end of 2021:

• Bordeaux on 30 July;
• Lyon on 30 September;
• then Lille, Marseille, Nantes, Nice, Strasbourg and Toulouse.

Airbnb published its own figures with the announcement. It said that in 2020 more than 95% of the entire homes available on Airbnb in Paris were rented for fewer than 120 nights, and that 97% of the listings that still had no registration number had received no booking in the previous three months. AFP noted that the company said a large majority of Paris hosts already complied, without providing figures.

On the ruling itself, Localtis, a news service published by Banque des Territoires, reported on 2 July that Airbnb said the decision should have no impact on its business or its host community in Paris, because it had already put compulsory registration in place for entire homes rented for short stays. Localtis reported that the company called the judgment contestable and said it was studying the possibility of an appeal.

How the city read it

In the city's release, Brossat said it was the first time in France that a local authority had won such an order against a digital giant, said the responsibility of platforms had at last been recognized, and called it a victory for Parisians. AFP reported that Mayor Anne Hidalgo, writing on Twitter, called the ruling a first in France and a major win both for efforts to house everyone and for regulating the rental market.

Localtis accepted the claim of a first, with a qualification. It was not the first time Airbnb had been penalized in France for not respecting the rules, the outlet wrote: in June 2020 the platform had been fined more than 54,000 euros, jointly with a tenant.

The trade site ShortTermRentalz, reporting on 2 July, put the fine at $9.5 million. It called Airbnb's new requirement “a change in the company’s stance” on listings without valid numbers.

What it meant for hosts

For a host renting an entire home in Paris, the working change in July 2021 came from the platform, on the same day as the order. From 1 July the listing had to show a registration number to take new bookings for short stays. The number, as AFP described it, was there to make sure the 120-night limit was kept and the income declared.

Hosts elsewhere in France had dates to work to. Airbnb named 30 July for Bordeaux and 30 September for Lyon, with the six other cities to follow by the end of 2021.

Airbnb's post also pointed to longer stays. It said the number of Paris hosts offering stays of a month or more under a mobility lease (bail mobilité) had risen by more than 150% between 1 January and 14 June 2021. The registration requirement, as the company described it, applied to new bookings for short stays.

The fine was imposed on Airbnb. None of the reports cited here describes a penalty on an individual host in this case.

Sources

1. Ville de Paris (City of Paris press office), Le tribunal judiciaire de Paris condamne Airbnb à verser une amende de 8 millions d’euros à la Ville de Paris, une première en France (1 July 2021).
2. Airbnb Newsroom (France), De nouvelles mesures pour une reprise responsable du tourisme sur Airbnb (30 June 2021).
3. The Local France (AFP report), Airbnb clamps down on unregistered Paris rentals as €8 million fine imposed by courts (1 July 2021).
4. Localtis (Banque des Territoires), Condamné à verser 8 millions à la ville de Paris, Airbnb interdit les annonces non enregistrées (2 July 2021).
5. Le Monde du Droit, Airbnb : condamnation pour défaut de numéro de déclaration dans ses annonces (2 July 2021).
6. ShortTermRentalz, Airbnb ordered to pay $9.5m fine by Paris court (2 July 2021).