Collective Commentary about the New Package Travel Directive

414 COLLECTIVE COMMENTARY ABOUT THE NEW PACKAGE TRAVEL DIRECTIVE A) Facilitating access to information and requests from Member States Article 18 of the Directive of 25 November 2015 on package travel allows the creation of “central contact points”. The purpose of these is the “administrative cooperation and supervision of the organisers”. This is to list all the necessary information on the identity of “entities in charge of the protection (...) for specific organisers established in the territory”. Thus, the Member States, the European Commission and also all European citizens will have access to all this information through an inventory, available online. This creation of the contact points seems to go towards the establishment of the strict liability of travel organisers in the fulfillment of their obligations related to the contract. In France, Atout France will be responsible for centralising this information. In addition, these organisations will have to answer any question raised by one of the Member States as soon as it raises “doubts concerning the protection against insolvency”. Each Member State shall seek “clarifications” and thus facilitate the understanding of all, including travellers, which are the first concerned. This is not only a question of “mutual recognition of insolvency protection”, but also a will to have administrative control over each of the entities at European level. B) A reassuring traveller’s protection in an objective for development The access to these different data will allow better information and understanding for the travellers, a group of people that must be protected, since they find themselves in a situation where they are entirely dependent on the organisation with which they organise their trip. Travellers, who are considered as the weak parties, are thus reassured due to the access to this information, since they will be able to evaluate beforehand the risks, in particular by having access to the various guarantees on which the package travel professionals rely. There is not any new perception of the traveller since the law of 1937 6 which, after the paid vacation, established a better protection and stricter obligations on travel operators in order to avoid the situation where travellers didn’t return to their destination, which was the case at the time from some unscrupulous professionals. 6 Law of 19 March 1937 called license, guide, interpreter, OJ 8 April 1937, p. 4018.