Collective Commentary about the New Package Travel Directive

ARTICLE 18 | LAURENCE JÉGOUZO 415 This important intention to place the traveller at the heart of the reform is not only a simple interest of protecting the traveller to the maximum. It is also a matter of developing his confidence, so that he travels in peace and can be satisfied, and then perhaps renew this experience for the next time. II. A DIFFICULT IMPLEMENTATION OF ARTICLE 18 OF THE EUROPEAN DIRECTIVE Article 18 seems to respond to the traveller’s first needs for safety, but it also causes a profound reorganisation for travel professionals (A), a reorganisation that may turn out to be nebulous in practice (B). A) A necessary adaptation of the travel organisers to article 18 While insolvency protection may seem natural to the entities of package travel, administrative cooperation can be much more difficult in practice. The different national organisations will designate the bodies in charge of financial guarantees and the contact points shall publish “the organisers who comply with their insolvency protection obligations”. Some will therefore have to comply with the expectations of the requirements of the Member State to be in accordance with the legislation in force. This is why a new adjustment will necessarily be established for a certain number of them. In order to meet European expectations, these organisations will have to be reshaped to correspond to the desires not only of the European Union, but also of travellers, who will have access to the inventory in which “the identity of the entities in charge of the protection in question for specific organisers established in their territory appears”. Furthermore, this administrative cooperation may appear ambiguous, since it could breach the principle of freedom of establishment, protected by articles 49 to 55 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. Indeed, the organisers will be forced to select financial guarantee organisations that meet the requirements of article 18 of the Presidential Decree, without actually having a choice. Previously, these organisers were free to choose one or more among them in the Member State that best suited their intentions. The room for maneuver of these organisations seems to be reduced to the benefit of a set of common principles, which may lead to the disappearance of certain entities that offered less guarantees than others.