Collective Commentary about the New Package Travel Directive

592 COLLECTIVE COMMENTARY ABOUT THE NEW PACKAGE TRAVEL DIRECTIVE 2. THE EFFECTS OF REPEALING A DIRECTIVE The repeal of a directive, regarding the fact that directives address Member States and not the citizens themselves, means essentially that Member States must produce their own legislation to transpose the new directive until the date of repeal. Regarding this issue, the question could be asked of what happens to the national laws that have transposed the previous directive after the repeal of that directive. In other words, in this case, and if a given Member State does not comply with the date of repeal, its own national legislation transposing the directive which is no longer in force could also be considered as repealed. We do not believe this is the case. The national law exists and it is based on a given directive, but its existence, once approved locally, goes far beyond the directive that was at its genesis. The entry into force of a rule of Community Law does not entail the repeal of the internal laws of the Member States; and this is so because EU laws, whether regulations or directives, and internal laws do not have the same normative character. Law repeals law, but a directive or regulation cannot repeal a law. The domestic law will remain in force although the provisions that regulate the same subject as the EU new law will cede before it, which will be the regulation applied to resolve issues that occur after the entry into force of the European law. In these cases, the rules of internal law will continue to be applied to resolve those situations not regulated by the new Community regulations and will also be valuable material for the interpretation of the remaining rules. In conclusion, national laws will be still in force after the date of repeal if the Member States do not produce another national law that repeals the previous national law. 3. THE MOMENT OF REPEAL In this directive, the EU legislator opted for an express repeal. Thus, in this article of the directive 3 , the effects of the previous directive 4 are removed with effect from 1 July 2018. 3 See Directive 2015/2302/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of November 25, 2015. 4 See Council Directive 90/314/EEC of June 13, 1990.