Collective Commentary about the New Package Travel Directive

SPAIN | GEA GÓMEZ-PABLOS PINTO 1191 The Directive aims to legislate new aspects derived from the irruption of online travel contracting, which has a special impact on consumers. According to data collected by the CNMC, online travel agencies sold more in the first nine months of 2018 than in the whole year 2017. In that period, the online travel companies sold 4,387.1 million euros, while in 2017 4,124.7 million euros were sold. In fact, the activity branch of travel agencies and tour operators is the branch with the highest percentage of business volume of electronic commerce in Spain, representing 13.4% of the whole electronic commerce volume in 2018 4 . In this context, the Spanish Ministry of Health, in November 2017, through theSpanishAgency forConsumerAffairs, FoodSafety andNutrition (AECOSAN), the competent body to propose regulatory changes in this matter, sent the CNMC the new draft before its approval, in order to submit it to their criteria. Thus, in January 2018, the CNMC issued its report (IPN/CNMC/042/17), the contents of which will be analysed below. Spain finally proceeded to adopt the Directive through the Royal Decree-Law 23/2018, last December. This text is a mix of transpositions of a series of Directives: trademarks, rail transport and package travel and related travel services. This adoption comes almost one year late with respect to the date established in the 2015 Directive. It should be borne in mind that, as established in article 28 of the 2015 Directive, the transposition deadline was the first of January 2018 but Member States were allowed to apply the measures from the first of July 2018. The provisions of Royal Decree-Law 23/2018, would be effective from January 2019, that is, six months behind the deadline set by the Directive. For this reason, the EuropeanCommission had initiated a formal infringement procedure against Spain (No. 2018/0068, as reported in the Preamble of the Royal Decree-Law) for lack of transposition of the Directive, under Article 258 of the Treaty of Functioning of the European Union. Coming back to the subject of this contribution, that is, the intervention of the Spanish competition authority through the issuance of a report on the new regulations on package travel in Spain, it is necessary to recall the functions and responsibilities of that authority. The CNMC is an institution of the public sector that regroups the regulatory entities of key markets in the economy, such as energy, telecommunications or transport and the entity dedicated to competition. The competition authority 4 https://www.cnmc.es/node/372895.