Collective Commentary about the New Package Travel Directive

ARTICLE 17 | PATRICIA BENAVIDES VELASCO 389 Directive created an obligation to achieve results: to confer a reimbursement to the buyers of a package travel for all the amounts paid, as well as taking care of repatriation in case of insolvency of the organiser of the travel. The scope of this guarantee was to protect the consumer from the consequences of insolvency, whatever their causes. Consequently, the guarantee was supposed to be activated even when the organiser had a negligent behaviour or when exceptional or unpredictable circumstances came to pass, as these should not represent an obstacle to the reimbursement of the paid amounts and the repatriation of the consumers 15 .The scope of article 7 of the Directive is the protection of consumers, so any other interpretation of its content would not make sense, seeing as this article confers to those buying a trip a right of reimbursement security for the paid amounts, as well as the repatriation in the event of the organiser’s insolvency. Moreover, the very content of such right can be ascertained with enough precision 16 . The Directive provides a broad margin of discretion to the member States to determine the more adequate means to apply, in order to achieve the desired result. Each State is free to choose frommultiple means to get the result prescribed by the Directive, but this should not be an obstacle in terms of goal compliance, namely to by conferring someone a right whose content can be ascertained with sufficient precision 17 . The Court has also considered whether the amounts paid in situ by consumers to a service provider should be covered within the concept of “security for the repatriation of the consumer”. The case in particular refers to the situations in which the buyer of a travel package has previously paid for accommodation costs to the organiser and, as a consequence of his insolvency, he has had to repay them – in this case – by taking care of the hotel. Otherwise, the consumer would not be allowed to leave the hotel to initiate his return trip. We can also consider whether, on the contrary, the wording of article 7 of the Directive makes reference to the reimbursement of the payments that are needed and unavoidable, such as the payment for the transport. The reasons to assume this position can be found on the fact that the goal of the Directive is to protect consumers and, in a situation like the aforementioned, the one benefitting indirectly is the service 15 Judgement of the Court of Justice of the European Union, of 16 February 2012, issue C-134/11. ECLI:EU:C:2012:98. 16 Judgement of the Court of Justice, of 8 October 1996, issues C-178/94, C-179/94, C-188/94 and C-190/94, Dilllenkofer . ECLI:EU:C:1996:375. 17 See paras. 40 to 45 of the Judgement of the Court of Justice, 8 October 1996, Dilllenkofer .