Collective Commentary about the New Package Travel Directive

198 COLLECTIVE COMMENTARY ABOUT THE NEW PACKAGE TRAVEL DIRECTIVE According to the quoted provision, the organiser is required to provide the traveller with a full refund of any payments made for the package and para 4 of Article 12 states that this refund has to be made without undue delay, but no later than 14 days after the termination of the travel contract. This obligation, of course, caused severe difficulties to organisers who had already made all necessary efforts to perform the package and paid their suppliers. Some European member states chose to introduce special acts or regulations allowing the organisers to provide vouchers for future services instead of issuing full refunds. While the reasons for such legal measures are more than understandable, they are not complicit with the provisions outlined in the Directive. Attempts to justify these exemptions with Article 9 of the Rome I Regulation or Article 107 para 3 of the TFEU are unconvincing: • Article 9 of the Rome I Regulation deals with an exemption from the applicable law, related to provisions which are regarded as crucial by a country in safeguarding its public interests, such as its political, social or economic organisation. Such provisions are applicable to any situation falling within their scope, irrespective of the law, otherwise applicable to the contract under this Regulation. This, however, does not mean that a country can rule out provisions of a Directive by declaring the conflicting provisions of its national law as “overriding mandatory provisions” because “overriding” only relates to the (national) law, otherwise applicable to the contract but not to the secondary law of the Union. • Article 107 para 3 of the TFEU relates to state aids and the preconditions of their grant, but cannot be used as a basis to rule out the consumer protection standard of a European Directive. 5.3. Price Reduction and Compensation for Damages Some packages, which began before the enforcement of any restrictions related to the Coronavirus crisis, were affected by these restrictions as the services included in the package could not be performed properly, which therefore resulted in a “lack of conformity” based on the definition of Article 3 para 13 PTD 2015. While such lack of conformity usually always entitles the traveller to an appropriate price reduction 33 , with the only exemption of a lack of conformity 33 Article 14 para 1 of PTD 2015.