Collective Commentary about the New Package Travel Directive

SLOVAKIA | MONIKA JURČOVÁ 1143 appropriate, if the transposition of this Directive was implemented into existing Act No. 161/2011 Coll. on consumer protection while providing certain tourist services as amended 6 . In the following, we will introduce the Slovak transposition of the Directive with a focus on two sets of questions. The “easier” set will consist mainly of a simple enumeration of the problems that arose in the application practice of the Directive 90/314/EEC 7 and which can now be considered as solved by the new Directive. Indeed, there is a number of issues where the new Directive exhaustively and often satisfactorily overcomes the application problems and issues that arose during the effectiveness of the previous legal regulation (school package travel, business trips, fly and drive, substantial price increase, ski passes and wellness in relation to a package, exceptional circumstances for the traveller’s withdrawal, etc.). The “more difficult” set consists of a partial analysis of the outcome of the European legislator’s effort to fully resolve the protection of travellers in the changed conditions of contracting of tourist services by creating a flexible definition of the package (in the Slovak legal regulation “package travel”) and a related definition of linked travel arrangements. This effort for the flexibility of the definition is to a certain extent a “pressure” for determining the subject of an organiser pursuant to Article 3 point 8 of the new Directive. The answer to the question “know your contractual party” may be foggy in the world of the internet. 2. APPLICATION ISSUES THAT ARE LIKELY TO BELONG TO THE PAST When writing the book The Law of Tourism 8 in 2014, we often pointed out the questions from the application practice of Directive 90/314/EEC (hereinafter referred as “old Directive”), which were solved in the decision-making of the Court of Justice of the EU (hereinafter referred as “CJEU”). Many of solved situations have been adopted into the new Directive, often in accordance with the decision-making of the CJEU: 6 This act has been enacted to implement Directive 2008/122/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 14 January 2009 on the protection of consumers in respect of certain aspects of timeshare, long-term holiday product, resale and exchange contracts. 7 Council Directive of 13 June 1990 on package travel, package holidays and package tours (90/314/EEC). 8 Jurčová, M. et al. Právo cestovného ruchu. Bratislava: C.H. Beck, 2014. ISBN 978-80-89603-27-5.