Collective Commentary about the New Package Travel Directive

1122 COLLECTIVE COMMENTARY ABOUT THE NEW PACKAGE TRAVEL DIRECTIVE system following the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989. Since 1990, Romania, like all other states in the former “communist bloc”, has gone through a complicated process of changing its entire legislative system and harmonizing it with the democratic demands and the needs of the functioning of the market economy. This process was accelerated after Romania submitted a request to become a member of the European Union (EEC at that time) on June 22, 1995, and especially after October 1999, when the European Commission recommended starting accession negotiations with Romania. Council Directive 90/314/EEC of 13 June 1990 on package travel, package holidays and package tours (the first directive on package travel) was transposed in Romania by the Government Ordinance no. 107 of 30 July 1999. Even though the other Member States had a decade advance in implementing this Directive, in getting familiar with all its stakeholders (public authorities, travel agencies, tour operators, tourists), Romania tried to catch up with this gap. The public authorities with control duties in the field of tourism had often applied considerable fines to travel agencies for minor deficiencies in the provision of tourist services. This attitude, however, made the vast majority of those involved in the provision of tourist services and the sales of tourist services packages to comply quickly with the new law, which then transposed the Directive 90/314/EEC. Unfortunately, in Romania, there have been mistakes in the implementation of this Directive transposed into national law by Government Ordinance 2 no. 107/1999. The main reason was the lack of the pre-existence of a unitary and coherent legislative framework regulating the functioning of the entire tourism sector. In particular, the lack of legislation regulating the sales of tourist services has made the provisions of G.O. no.107/1999 misapplying their applicability to other types of legal relations than those concerning the packages of tourist services (eg., the tourist services sold individually, not included in tourist packages). The situation has not changed up to this point, after the entry into force of Directive (EU) 2015/2302. Romania has transposed this Directive on package travel and associated travel services without having a legal regulation of the commercialization of tourism services in general, so that this type of legal relationship remained under the prescriptions of the common law of contracts, in particular those relating to the provision of services (in a general sense). 2 Abbreviated below as “GO”.