Collective Commentary about the New Package Travel Directive

398 COLLECTIVE COMMENTARY ABOUT THE NEW PACKAGE TRAVEL DIRECTIVE highlight that the content of article 17 is far more precise than the previous one. This provision covers some issues that solve several legal problems that arose under the previous regulation and that were solved through different decisions of the European Union Court of Justice, in cases where this Court had the opportunity to make a pronouncement on the abrogated article 7 of the 1990 Directive 39 . Such a security produces effects in two different moments. The first one is when the insolvency of the organiser is produced before the beginning of the travel package. The second one considers the insolvency situation in the moment in which the travel package is under execution. In any case, the security must be enough to cover all the payments made by the travellers or by any third party on their behalf, in the cases in which the corresponding services had not been executed as a consequence of the insolvency of the organiser. Along with this obligation, the organiser also has the duty to provide a guarantee to cover the repatriation of the traveller, when the contract includes a transport service. Nevertheless, it must also be possible to offer the traveller the continuation of the travel package as was stipulated under the contract. In this case we believe that the execution of the travel package has already begun and the organiser has agreed with the providers of the different services to offer their products to the traveller in the form considered in the contract. Member States of the European Union have the possibility to decide the form that this insurance must have to protect the traveller from the insolvency of the organiser. On this aspect, many internal regulations require the organiser to provide a security to cover a certain percentage of their turnover. This security must cover the foreseeable amounts that may result from the insolvency of the organiser and, when relevant, the repatriation costs. That is why it must be high enough as to cover all the eventual expenses to be assumed by the traveller during high season. As the European regulation considers, this requirement calls for the security to cover a sufficiently high percentage of the organiser’s turnover and depends on factors such as the type of travel that has been organized, the destinations, the means of transport used, etc. The way to calculate the amount to be disbursed in order to provide the coverage required by the Regulation can be determined by looking at the most 39 Vid ., see references made to the decisions of the Court of Justice under number 2.1 of this chapter.