Collective Commentary about the New Package Travel Directive

ROMANIA | ILIE DUMITRU 1125 defined in Article 3 (2) of Directive (EU) 2015/2302.Consequently, this means that also the Romanian law transposing Directive (EU) 2011/83 does not apply to contracts for the sale of travel services packages, which are concluded under Romanian law transposing Directive (EU) 2015/2302. Therefore, in the absence in Directive (EU) 2015/2302 of a text equivalent to Article 24 (1) of Directive (EU) 2011/83, the Romanian national law transposing the Package Travel Directive does not contain any sanction of breach of the obligation of pre-contractual information, other than the administrative fine. In other words, the traveller, uninformed or misinformed by the professional travel package organiser or retailer, may only use the provisions of the common law on contracts to defend his rights and protect his interests. The Romanian Civil Code, which constitutes the general law on contracts, does not provide for a pre-contractual information obligation. Accordingly, no general sanction is provided by the general law for failing to fulfill such obligation. According to common law, the lack of informal formality would only be a reason for annulment (and not an absolute nullity) and only if it would result in the consent of the recipient of the information being vitiated by error or deceit. In particular, failure to inform or misinformation of the contracting consumer can not affect the total or partial validity of the contract unless it causes a state of essential error 5 which may be invoked by the consumer as a vitiated consent, sanctioned by relative nullity (annulment). However, even in the case of an essential fault of the tourist due to his lack of information or misinformation of the travel agency, the Romanian Civil Code provides in article 1213 the solution of the contract adaptation, in order to continue it. The contract will be adapted 5 Romanian Civil Code, Art. 1207 – Error: “(1) A party who, at the time of conclusion of the contract, is in an essential error may request its cancellation if the other party knew or, as the case may be, had to know that the fact that it was error was essential for the conclusion of the contract. (2) Error is essential: 1. when dealing with the nature or object of the contract; 2. when it relates to the identity of the object of the benefit or of a quality or other circumstance considered essential by the parties in the absence of which the contract would not have been concluded; 3. when it bears on the identity of the person or on the quality of the person in the absence of which the contract would not have been concluded. (3) The error of law is essential when it concerns a provision of law which is essential, according to the will of the parties, for the conclusion of the contract. (4) The error relating only to motives of the contract is not essential unless, by the will of the parties, such reasons were considered decisive.”