Collective Commentary about the New Package Travel Directive

CYPRUS | CHRISTIANA MARKOU 733 of core terms, on which the applicability of legal rules depends, must be clear leaving little to interpretation. This lightens the burden of the courts and allows for certainty, which facilitates compliance by traders and empowers buyers, who must know their rights and when exactly they have them. In relation to the definition of “unavoidable and extraordinary circumstances”, the Law similarly adds wording, which can facilitate its application. More specifically, it is not confined itself to reproducing the definition of the Directive but goes further, thereby providing an indicative list of such circumstances. The list includes wars, terrorism, serious health risks and natural disasters such as floods, earthquakes or extreme weather conditions. It arises that the indicative list contains standard force majeure events (wars, earthquakes etc) as well as circumstances that are very relevant to the object of the Law, which is travels and holidays (health risks and extreme weather conditions). The Cyprus Consumer Association had sought the inclusion of a definition for the term ‘compensation’, so that it is made clear that it includes non-monetary damage, without success. A second group of differences can be found in the substantive provisions of the Law without all of them being remarkable however. Thus, Article 10 of the Directive referring to the alteration of prices is transposed through Article 9 of the Law verbatim except that Article 9 also states that a term in the contract permitting price increase will be null and void unless certain conditions are met. Those are the conditions to which Article 10 of the Directive subjects the freedom of the organiser to increase price after contract conclusion. Given that one of those conditions is essentially the existence of an express contract term permitting price increase, one sees that Article 9 of the law is an example of imperfect drafting; it effectively reads that a contract term permitting price increase is void unless there is a contract term permitting price increase. Of course, because the totality of Article 10 is adopted, the aforementioned excess, wording in Article 9 does not affect the essence of the provision and does not constitute bad implementation on the part of Cyprus. Moreover, the Law somewhat strengthens the second sentence of Article 10(5) of the Directive, as in addition to “At the traveller’s request, the organiser shall provide proof of those administrative expenses”, Article 9(5) of the Law explicitly also states that the traveller has the right to ask for the said proof. Such a right lies implicitly but clearly in Article 10(5) of the Directive, yet there is an obvious benefit in expressly spelling or flagging out consumer (or buyer) rights, as the Cypriot implementation does in this case. The same choice was made by the Cypriot legislator in the case of Article 13(4) of the Directive. More