Tourism Law in Europe

4 tourism law has yet to become the subject of any in-depth study 6 . A working definition that could apply to “tourism law” is the following: “tourism law is the set of rules of public and private law that regulate issues pertaining to tourism product supply and demand or tourism trade in general, as well as the state’s preventive and restrictive operation of the tourism market. Tourism law serves not only as a means for the development of tourism but also as a regulator for the activities of producers, intermediaries and consumers (i.e. tourists) within the tourism sector. Its subject-matter is the regulation of relationships among providers of tourism products/services and between these providers and the recipients (i.e. tourists), as well as the state supervision of these relationships”. In Greece, the tourism sector is devoid of any primary piece of legislation that could form the core for a scientific engagement thereof. Instead, there is a profusion of mainly obsolete regulations that can be found in various statutes, beginning from the 1930s and still in effect nowadays. Particularly regarding written law – as a source of tourism law – it should be noted that it is dispersed among special laws and various provisions interpolated in legal acts that regulate other fields, or even legislative decrees, presidential decrees, regulatory acts, ministerial decisions etc. This degree of dispersion poses a significant problem for those who study the tourism phenomenon, as well as for traders, a problem exacerbated by the fact that it has been impossible to accrue and codify the current tourism legislation. A special statute that consolidates all provisions applicable to tourism could contribute to streamlining and unifying the current legislation, a legislation presently only made up of scattered provisions. A statute of that kind would aim at eliminating legal uncertainty, creating a level playing field for domestic and foreign providers of tourism services and 6 An instance of such efforts is the one made by F. Tsetsekos, who attempted to approach the tourism phenomenon in his 1976 treatise Το δίκαιο του τουρισμού [Tourism law] (1976), as well as E. Mountanos’ Κώδικας της ξενοδοχειακής νομοθεσίας και νομολογίας [Code of hotel legislation and jurisprudence], written in 1979, a more comprehensive and improved version of his previous book Ξενοδοχειακή νομοθεσία και νομολογία [Hotel legislation and jurisprudence] (1976). Moreover, in 1987, the Deputy Minister of National Economy highlighted the need to create a Tourism Code which would systematise the then-current administrative acts while also enriching tourism legislation, but his initiative was never realised. It is also worth mentioning M. Athanasiadi’s book Ξενοδοχειακή και τουριστική νομοθεσία [Hotel and tourism legislation] (1997), an analysis of laws pertaining to tourist accommodation, and a study by L. Georgakopoulos and G. Sotiropoulos, Τουριστική και Ξενοδοχειακή Νομοθεσία [Tourism and hotel legislation], which was published in 2000 by Nomiki Bibliothiki.