Collective Commentary about the New Package Travel Directive

ARTICLE 15 | CHIARA TINCANI 369 Community Law has conceived this activity according to the solution of questions pertaining to the position of organisers. Based on the Directive, retailers should be mostly consolidated companies, active in limited areas, with local customers and traditional structures; with regard to this image, it is not known how convincing a contact with them was considered easier for tourists. In the collective view, they are increasingly inclined to buy packages electronically, yet they use traditional channels and prefer to contact the intermediaries to resolve disagreements regarding the organiser’s activity when they need to put forth claims; they count on the help of intermediaries and on their possible contribution, at a consultative level. Art. 15 is reasonable, mainly because it guarantees full uniformity in the European market 11 . The importance of the second paragraph is not to be overestimated, because the same conclusions could have been reached in various legal systems, for example in Italy, where similar principles were set out concerning insurance agents 12 , at least according to a part of the jurisprudence 13 . However, art. 15, second clause, excludes any uncertainty and, above all, regulates the effectiveness of the acts received from the retailers, according to a discipline favourable to tourists, who are certain of the fact that, when their act reaches the intermediaries, their objectives in terms of limitations are carried out. This is important in systems, such as the Italian and French systems, where extrajudicial injunctions interrupt the course of the relevant term. 2. THE TRANSPOSITION OF ART. 15 OF EU DIRECTIVE 2015/2302 IN CERTAIN EUROPEAN COUNTRIES In Italy, the EU Directive 2015/2302 was implemented with Legislative Decree No. 62, dated 2018, and art. 44, reproduced the text in art. 15 of the same Directive without clarifying imprecise expressions of the European Law text, such as the reference to “compliance with the terms or periods of limitation”, a term which is hardly in line with the categories of our legal system. Nevertheless, the provision adapts to the internal system, which has opted to consider the 11 See S. Keiler – F. Morandi, Package travel and assisted travel arrangements: The proposal for a new directive in light of a possible full harmonization approach , loc. cit. , 2014, 5 ss. 12 See Cass. 28 November 2003, n. 18243, in Gius, 2004, 2032. 13 See Cass. 10 January 2003, n. 204, in Ass., 2003, 235.