Collective Commentary about the New Package Travel Directive

BELGIUM | ILSE MEYERS 677 F. Financial failure insurance for retailers 11. Obligatory financial failure insurance – Directive 2015/2302/EU compels member states to protect travellers from the organiser’s potential financial insolvency. This protection must be adequate and effective. Organisers must ensure that the refund of all payments received from or on behalf of travellers is guaranteed. If a package travel includes passenger transport, the insurance must also cover the repatriation of travellers in the event of the organisers’ insolvency. The continuation of the package can also be proposed as an option to travellers 11 . 12. Protection also in the event of the retailer’s insolvency – Recital 41 of the European Directive lets the Member States choose whether to also compel retailers to provide protection in the event of insolvency. The Belgian legislator has used this opportunity and stipulates, in Article 54 of the Law dated 21 November 2017, that both the organiser and the retailer must ensure that travellers are protected in the event of their insolvency. Belgian travellers consequently enjoy this extra protection 12 . 13. Protection in the event of insolvency that also covers individual travel service agreements – In view of the fact that the Belgian transposition law regulates not only package travel and linked travel arrangements but also the sale of individual travel services, the legislator has imposed both an information duty upon organisers or retailers selling individual travel services as an intermediary, and a duty of providing security for the refund of all payments they have received from, or on behalf of, travellers, should the travel services in question not be provided as a result of their insolvency 13 . This duty is not new. Even in the former Travel Contract Law, dated 1994, travel mediators were obliged to demonstrate that they could provide adequate guarantees to meet their obligations vis-à-vis travellers, in the event of financial failure. They had to ensure that any amount already paid could be refunded to travellers 14 . 11 Draft legislation concerning the sale of package travel, linked travel arrangements and travel services, dated 21 November 2017, Parl. St. Kamer 2016-17, No. 2653/001, 55. 12 Ibid . 13 Art. 72 of the Law pertaining to the sale of package travel, linked travel arrangements and travel services, dated 21 November 2017, BS 1 December 2017, 106.684. 14 P. NELISSEN GRADE and I. MEYERS, De Reiswet (The Travel Law) 21 November 2017 , Mechelen, Wolters Kluwer, 2019, 28.