Collective Commentary about the New Package Travel Directive

736 COLLECTIVE COMMENTARY ABOUT THE NEW PACKAGE TRAVEL DIRECTIVE it does not really impose an additional (substantive) obligation on the organiser and only seeks to clarify that organisers must be able to demonstrate that they have complied with their obligation not to charge travellers more than their actual cost. This (supplementary) obligation to maintain relevant proof could even be taken as lying implicitly in the provision of the Directive prohibiting charges in excess of the actual cost. The Law therefore simply flags it out for the avoidance of doubt improving effectiveness. A third group of differences relates to the provisions on insolvency protection. First of all, in Article 16(1) of the Law, the Cypriot legislator seems to be using both the word “guarantee” and the word “security”. In Article 16(2) referring to organisers not established in the EU, it opts for the word “guarantee”. In the corresponding Article 17(1) of the Directive, (only) the word “security” is consistently used. In the Greek version of the Directive, again only one word is (consistently) used, albeit this is the word “guarantee”, rather than “security”. The most appropriate word in the relevant context is “security”, but the use of both words in the same provision by the Cypriot legislator is difficult to explain. Though it may be liable to cause confusion, particularly because the required security can, in accordance with Articles 17 and 18 of the Law, be provided through insurance (by a licensed insurer) or a guarantee (by a financial institution), it is probably accidental and enforcers should not read too much, if anything, in it. Presumably, this is one of the things that will be corrected in the context of a future amendment of the Law. A desirable addition in Article 16(1) third indent of the Law, which has resulted from a relevant suggestion by ACTA, is a definition of the term “insolvent”, which is absent from the Directive possibly resulting in uncertainty regarding when exactly the provided security must be released to the benefit of travellers. According to the relevant provision in the Law, an organiser is deemed insolvent, when , for any reason , is unable to perform wholly or partly the contracted for travel services. It seems that it incorporates relevant CJEU case law under the old Package Travel Directive, according to which the reasons behind the inability to perform are irrelevant to the security provisions of the Directive 5 , making application by enforcers easier. The Law, specifically Article 16(8) goes even further usefully specifying that the security must be immediately available (i) when the travel services are not performed, (ii) when they will not be performed (thus covering the case for which it becomes clear that the organiser 5 Case C 134/11, 16/2/2012.