Collective Commentary about the New Package Travel Directive

730 COLLECTIVE COMMENTARY ABOUT THE NEW PACKAGE TRAVEL DIRECTIVE 2. THE WAY TOWARDS LAW 186(I)/2017 The process leading to the adoption of Law 186(I)/2017 (implementing the Directive) has been uneventful given that it was necessary for Cyprus to comply with its obligations as a member of the EU. Given also that the Directive, (as per its Article 4), is a maximum harmonization measure, the Cypriot legislator had little freedom to deviate from its provisions and thus, most of the disagreements or doubts by stakeholders in Cyprus were bound easily to be resolved. The draft law has been prepared by the Consumer Protection Service, (the national consumer protection authority in Cyprus belonging to the Ministry of Energy, Commerce and Industry) and has been put to public consultation from the 9 March 2017 to the 10April 2017. Several stakeholders have contributed to the particular consultation, the richest contribution unsurprisingly coming from the Association of CyprusTravel Agents (ACTA) 2 . Some of the suggestions concerned clarifications to be made in the draft law, which were not necessary according to the Consumer Protection Service, as the draft law (and the Directive) were already clear on the particular matters. Others were seeking to protect business interests in the particular domain and ease regulatory burdens. For example, it has been suggested that the deadline withinwhich the travellermust communicate his intention to assign the package travel to another traveller should be increased from seven (7) to twenty (20) days. Similarly, the limitation period for bringing claims for compensation against organisers was suggested to be reduced from two (2) years to one (1). Apart from lowering consumer protection, the Consumer Protection Service correctly noted that the proposed amendments were prohibited by the maximum harmonization nature of the Directive. Some of them were also expressly prevented by specific provisions of the Directive; Article 14(6) of the Directive for example, states that “The limitation period for introducing claims under this Article shall not be less than two years ” 3 . They were therefore rightly not adopted by the Consumer Protection Service. One heated matter concerned insolvency protection, specifically, the amount to be covered by the bank guarantee to be provided by the organiser. An exact amount is not spelled out in the Directive and the draft law stated that it should 2 The suggestions of the stakeholders as well as views of the Cyprus Consumer Protection Service are available online (in Greek), see Consumer Protection Service, Public Consultation for three draft laws prepared for the purpose of harmonization with Directive 2015/2302. http://www.mcit.gov.cy/mcit/cyco/cyconsumer.nsf/All/F7A 675C92477A989C22580DF0030BD53?OpenDocument (accessed 12 th July 2019). All references to stakeholders’ suggestions in the this chapter have been derived from this source. 3 Emphasis added.