Collective Commentary about the New Package Travel Directive

1074 COLLECTIVE COMMENTARY ABOUT THE NEW PACKAGE TRAVEL DIRECTIVE (1) Pursuant to Article 1 of the Act on package travel and linked travel arrangements, the A.P.T. specifies: first of all, the conditions for offering, selling and performing package travel and linked travel arrangements in the territory of the Republic of Poland, as well as abroad, if the contracts with travellers are concluded by tourist traders having their registered offices in the territory of the Republic of Poland; secondly, the rules of functioning of the Tourist Guarantee Fund. This Act consists of ten chapters: “General provisions” (Chapter 1), “Travel organisers, travel agents and traders facilitating linked travel arrangements” (Chapter 2), “Insolvency of travel organisers and traders facilitating linked travel arrangements” (Chapter 3), “Rules for keeping a register of travel organisers and traders facilitating linked travel arrangements and the Central Register of Travel Organisers and Traders Facilitating Linked Travel Arrangements” (Chapter 4), “Tourism Guarantee Fund” (Chapter 5), “Information requirements for travellers and package travel contract” (Chapter 6), “Performance of the package travel contract” (Chapter 7), “Penalty payments and criminal provisions” (Chapter 8), “Amendments to existing legislation” (Chapter 9) and “Transitional and final provisions” (Chapter 10). Therefore, the structure of the division of the Act differs from the structure of the division of the Directive. Unlike the Directive, the Act does not contain a preamble (in Polish law, the Acts contain it as an exception). Although the A.P.T. essentially serves to implement the provisions of the Directive, it also contains provisions concerning two EU regulations – mentioned in footnote 6 (Regulation No. 1177/2010 and Regulation No. 181/2011). Regardless of the different internal division, the Polish legislator has introduced a different order of regulations in many places of regulation or a different manner of formulation of regulations. For example, in Directive 2015/2302, the term “package” has been defined in Article 3(2) of this act. In the A.P.T., this definition has been unnecessarily divided into two provisions. First, it is indicated in Article 4(2) that package travel should be understood as a combination of at least two different types of travel services for the purposes of the same trip or holiday, fulfilling the conditions referred to in Article 5(1), and only in the aforementioned provision, after several other definitions have been indicated in the Act, in the next article is it indicated when the package travel is created. This is not conducive to the readability of the definition, which is not easy to interpret anyway. (2) The provisions of the Act on package travel and linked travel arrangements supplement regulations issued on the basis of the Act (executive acts to the Act):