Collective Commentary about the New Package Travel Directive

THE PROVISIONS OF EXPLICIT TAX RELEVANCE 627 Indeed, as it is well known, the harmonization of indirect taxation in the European market is one of the objectives of the Union in order to avoid distortions of competition 8 . However, it is clear that the EU Directive 2015/2302, by its very nature, would have had difficulty in intervening deeper in the tax area. This is not only because of its specific purpose, but above all because Article 113 TFEU lays down the principle of unanimity in tax matters and, in recent years, the Member States have been vigorously defending their fiscal sovereignty. 1. THE ARTICLES OF THE DIRECTIVE CONTAINING TAX-RELATED PROVISIONS The Directive (EU) 2015/2302 represents a missed opportunity for taxation. As mentioned above, the provisions of the Directive that make explicit reference to tax profiles are really poor. These are, in particular, Recital 33, Article 5, relating to pre-contractual information, Article 9, relating to the transfer of the contract and the tourist package to another traveler, and Article 10, relating to the revision of the price. It should also be specified, before going into the substance of the individual rules, that the Directive (EU) 2015/2302 often uses rather vague terms with specific reference to the few tax issues incidentally considered. There is a very specific reason for what has just been said: as can be seen from a simple reading, the Directive only incidentally touches the field of tax law. Therefore, it will be up to each individual Member State to implement the new legislation with more specific terminology based on the internal terminology of each national legislation. This is especially true when one considers the extreme variety of national tax systems and the type of indirect taxes on business and local taxes, which are immediately and directly relevant to the management of package travels. 8 As it is well known, tax harmonization is a legal procedure necessary to bring tax legislation closer to two or more Member States in order to make it similar and in line with a single model. In the European Union, it is pursued through the alignment and coordination of Member States’ legislation on indirect taxes and on turnover and consumption, with a view to the establishment and functioning of the internal market. In particular, the provisions of Articles 113 and 114 TFEU, Articles 114 and 115 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union and Articles 113 TFEU refer to “harmonization”, and Articles 114 and 115 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union refer to unanimity with regard to harmonization.