Collective Commentary about the New Package Travel Directive

The Transposition of the Package Travel Directive in Luxembourg Valérie Augros 1 Introduction; A Literal Transposition of the Directive. INTRODUCTION Tourism now represents a significant part of the economic activity of the Grand- -Duchy of Luxembourg, with more than 19,500 employees working directly or indirectly in this sector 2 . A fast-growing expansion of tourism in Luxembourg has been observed since 2010, and tourist frequentation has increased successfully over recent years 3 . Following the adoption of the Directive (EU) 2015/2302 of 25 November 2015 on package and linked travel arrangements (hereinafter “the Directive”), a draft Transposition Act and a draft Regulation were prepared and submitted by the Minister for Economic Affairs to the Luxembourg Commerce Chamber for an opinion. Interestingly, the Commerce Chamber noted that this Directive was of maximum harmonisation and admitted that it was in the Grand Duchy’s practice to literally transpose European directives. However, it also outlined that some of the new concepts introduced by the Directive (such as travel package, linked travel arrangements, unavoidable and extraordinary circumstances, etc.) were unclear or could give rise to confusion. Hence, to avoid any difficulty of interpretation for both tourism professionals and travellers, the Minister was invited to define in more detail these new concepts 4 . 1 Avocat à la Cour. 2 https://meco.gouvernement.lu/fr/le-ministere/domaines-activite/tourisme.html. 3 https://www.wort.lu/fr/luxembourg/pour-la-quatrieme-annee-consecutive-le-tourisme-bat-des-records-en-2016 -au-luxembourg-58a4935ba5e74263e13aaa8d. 4 Opinions of the Commerce Chamber of 13 July 2017 and of 27 February 2018.