Collective Commentary about the New Package Travel Directive

Patricia Benavides Velasco 1 ABSTRACT : This chapter considers the relevance of administrative cooperation between the different Member States for the proper functioning of the European Single Market. We will focus on the administrative cooperation between national authorities and the European Commission seeking to control the compliance with the obligations assumed by Member States with regards to the insolvency of travel packages organisers operating in different Member States. However, this administrative cooperation does not limit itself to control activities, as we will consider in this essay. It also covers information duties in terms of the requirements laid down by every Member State’s regulation about the insolvency of the travel organisers and, when relevant, the retailers. The freedom to provide services in the European Economic Area must not imply any obstacle for the legal certainty of those travellers who acquire a travel package or a linked travel arrangement from a company whose registered office is in a different Member State from the buyer’s place of residence. In any case, this traveller is to be protected by the rules implemented by Directive (EU) 2015/2302 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 25 November 2015, on package travel and linked travel arrangements, amending Regulation (EC) no. 2006/2004 and Directive 2011/83/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council and repealing Council Directive 90/314/EE. For these reasons, as article 18 of the Directive states, the same legal mechanisms established in the different Member States must be recognized in order to protect the travellers interests in cases of insolvency of the travel packages organiser and, when relevant, of the retailer 2 . Keywords: mutual recognition, freedom to provide services, information exchange, administrative cooperation, central contact points, supervision of travel packages organisers, insolvency. 1 Commercial Law Senior Lecturer. University of Málaga, Spain. E-mail: pgbv@uma.es . 2 This essay is made within the framework of the Research Projects “Modernización y competitividad del tejido empresarial andaluz tras la crisis. Marco societario y entorno digital. Conflicto y soluciones” (TEASOTIC), UMA18-FEDERJA-269. I.P. González Fernández.. The author is a member of the Research Group Tourism, Land Planning and Environment (TOTMA) integrated within the University Institute ECOAQUA of the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.