RYANAIR SAID yesterday it was winning its battle against ticket touts, and the European Commission said it had ended an inquiry into the carrier over the conflict.

At the start of this month, the airline began cancelling and reimbursing around 450 bookings a day made by online ticket agents known as screen scrapers who were selling the tickets to passengers at inflated prices.

Yesterday, the commission, which wrote to Ryanair seeking information on whether the airline was breaking laws on passenger rights, said it had ended its inquiry into the practice.

"Yes, that is the end of the matter for now," a commission spokesman said. "The commission has received no actual complaints from passengers . . . but of course we have reiterated our warning to Ryanair."

A Ryanair spokesman also said he had heard no reports of passengers being denied boarding at any airports and it seemed the message was getting through to screen-scraping websites.

"At the start of August we were cancelling around 450 tickets a day booked by screen scrapers," he added. "Last week it was down to 60 to 70 a day."