Collective Commentary about the New Package Travel Directive

418 COLLECTIVE COMMENTARY ABOUT THE NEW PACKAGE TRAVEL DIRECTIVE I. Introduction; II. The removal of obstacles in the market of services and the need for cooperation between the Member States; III. Administrative cooperation between national authorities of the Member States and the European Commission; 3.1. General aspects on administrative cooperation; 3.2. Information exchange; 3.3. The obligation of an administrative cooperation with regards to the insolvency of the travel packages organiser under Spanish regulation; IV. Bibliography. I. INTRODUCTION Article 18 of the Directive 2015/2302 has as its object to regulate the mutual recognition of insolvency protection and administrative cooperation. This precept considers the need of recognition by the Member States of any protection against an organiser’s insolvency, as established by the regulation of the State in which it has its registered office 3 . This provision also considers the creation of some bodies entrusted to facilitate the administrative cooperation, which will also supervise the travel packages organisers operating in different Member States. In particular, these bodies will control the compliance with the obligations imposed by the Directive with regards to the provision of securities in case of insolvency. These supervision and information bodies have been named “central contact points”. Each States will have the obligation to name one body to assume these responsibilities and must communicate their existence to the different member States and the European Commission. The main function of these national central contact points is to provide any information needed on the requirements set by their national regulations about the granting of legal protection to the buyers of travel packages in cases of insolvency of the organisers and, when relevant, of the retailers 4 . To achieve the goals considered by Directive 2015/2302, these contact points will confer a mutual access to any available listing indicating that organisers comply with their protection obligations in case of insolvency. 3 On this topic, see BENAVIDES VELASCO, P., (2018), “A new draft regulation of package travels in Spain”, in Sustainable Tourism Law, (Ed. V. Franceschelli, F. Morandi and C. Torres), ESHTE/Inatel/Alentejo, Estoril, Portugal, pp. 541-564 so as in “La obligación de las agencias de viaje de prestar las garantías contempladas en la Directiva de viajes combinados”, International Journal of Scientific Management andTourism , Vol. 4, no. 2, pp. 92-114. 4 On this point it is important to remember that Directive 2015/2302 allows Member States to broaden the requirement to provide securities to face insolvency situations, requesting this obligation to the retailers that participate in the commercialization of travel packages.