Collective Commentary about the New Package Travel Directive

ARTICLE 15 | CHIARA TINCANI 371 place the Community principles to its system, Greece symmetrically translated all the provisions of the Directive. Art. 14 of Decree No. 12 of 2018 is a literal version of art. 15 of the European Law text. Austria transcribed art. 15 of the Directive 18 , recognizing the intermediary’s power of representation. The United Kingdom is also in line with these settings. However, in art. 17 of Regulation No. 634 of 2018 19 , before textually transposing the European Law subject manner, it was envisaged that, in a typical contractual scheme, tourists might contact organisers via retailers. The Federal Republic of Germany gave a different interpretation of art. 15 of the Directive. According to art. 651v of the Drittes Gesetz zur Aenderung reiserechtlicher Vorschriften , dated 17 July 2017, regarding the modification of the Buergerliches Gesetzbuch , organisers, not tourists, should decide whether to ask retailers to receive the travellers’ complaints or other disputes on their behalf. Furthermore, the text did not include the principle of receipt of acts. This solution is not reflected in art. 15 of the Directive, because, based on a literal interpretation, tourists are the principal and the transposition of the second clause is mandatory. This summary analysis of the solutions adopted by various systems demonstrates how the most significant countries, from the standpoint of tourism, did not attribute excessive importance to art. 15 of the Directive, and perhaps wrongly because the Regulation is not to be considered trivial. Silenced by the Federal Republic of Germany’s questionable approach, there should have been some clarification on how the principle of European Law can be adopted by each private system, regarding the various institutes and, in the continental system, the various disciplines of limitation. The simplified choice of many transposing acts avoids this issue, even though it should not be impossible to address the application problems in each national context. 18 With reference to Austria, see section 13 of the Federal Act No. 50 of 2017 regarding “package travel Act and amendment of the consumer protection Act, the distance selling and external business Act, and the consumer authorities cooperation Act”. 19 With reference to the UK, see the Consumer protection. The package travel and linked travel arrangements Regulations 2018. Statute No. 634, 2018.