Collective Commentary about the New Package Travel Directive

ARTICLE 3 | VINCENZO FRANCESCHELLI AND CARLOS TORRES 107 Some remarks as to the binding effect of the Preamble of the Community Act have been presented in the CJEU judgment dated 24 November 2005; in Case C-136/04, Deutsches Milch-Kontor GmbH, in the CJEU judgment dated 2 April 2009 and in case C-134/08, Hauptzollamt Bremen. According to these judgments: “the Preamble to a Community act has no binding legal force and cannot be relied on either as a ground for derogating from the actual provisions of the act in question or for interpreting those provisions in a manner clearly contrary to their wording”. Preambles are usually long and complex. In a certain way, they are written in order to explain to the Member State and to the people of the Union why a Directive or a Regulation is approved or has to be implemented. It is seldom repeated that Preambles do not have an imperative value, but are often used as a tool of interpretation. If this is true, EU Legislation has accustomed us to an impressing number of Recitals that usually precede the text of Directives and Regulations. And so it happened in the 2015/2302 Directive. 1.3. Definitions in EU Law If, in general, definitions are not appreciated, completely different is the approach to Definitions in EU Law. This is probably due to the invasive characteristic of EU Law. Regulations must penetrate uniformly in the different legal systems of Union States. Directives must sufficiently clear to be understood by the Parliaments of the Member States when they start working in their implementation. The same term may have slightly different meanings in the variegate legal systems of the Union. From this, the opportunity to express a unique meaning to a legal term used in the Directive or in the Regulation. 1.4. Definitions, Tourism and Directives Definitions are particularly useful when the Legislator – National or European – starts to regulate a new field of the law. Such was the case of Tourism. Before 1990, the National Laws of the European Member States did not have a clear approach to Tourism, to the protection of Tourists and to the regulation of Tourist Contracts. UE Law had started a strong policy in the field of consumer protection, but had not yet focused its attention to Tourism.