Collective Commentary about the New Package Travel Directive

1198 COLLECTIVE COMMENTARY ABOUT THE NEW PACKAGE TRAVEL DIRECTIVE been implemented by two new acts; the Package Travel Act 2 and the Travel Guarantees Act 3 . Both acts entered into force on 1 August 2018. Sweden, as well as the other Scandinavian countries, has historically had a high level of consumer protection in the field of travel. The previous Package Travel Act thus provided a higher level of security for the consumers than the 1990 Directive 4 . Over all, the Directive does not include any major changes for Sweden, compared to the repealed Swedish legislation. THE PACKAGE TRAVEL ACT The Swedish act is very close to the Directive. The legislator has chosen not to use any of the possibilities to deviate from the Directive. The Package Travel Act consists of six chapters, the same way as the Directive: 1. Introductory regulations, 2. The package travel contract and information, 3. Changes to the contract before the start of the package, 4. Performance of the package, 5. Linked travel arrangements and 6. Supervision. Chapter V of the Directive has been implemented through a separate act on travel guarantees. Chapter 1 – Introductory regulations The chapter starts with a portal article stating that the act covers package travels and linked travel arrangements. This article also includes the exemptions from the scope, i.e., trips that last less than 24 hours, occasional, non-profit trips and trips purchased on the basis of a general agreement of business travel. The two first exemptions were already included in the 1994 Package Travel Act and have not caused any discussions during the implementation. When it comes to the exemption for business travel, the working group proposed to use the term frame agreement instead of general agreement , since frame agreement is a term that is commonly used in Sweden and thus were less likely to cause interpretation problems. During the consultation procedure however, many stakeholders argued that the change in wording might limit the exemption, since the termgeneral agreement may include other agreements than frame agreements. 2 Paketreselag (2018:1217). 3 Resegarantilag (2018:1218). 4 Council Directive of 13 June 1990 on package travel, package holidays and package tours (90/314/EEC).