Collective Commentary about the New Package Travel Directive

752 COLLECTIVE COMMENTARY ABOUT THE NEW PACKAGE TRAVEL DIRECTIVE Following a first reading of the proposal for the new act in the Danish Parliament, a politician from the Danish People’s Party, Dorthe Ullemose, quoted H.C. Andersen: “At rejse er at leve” (To travel is to live). She continued by speaking in favour of the proposed new Package Travel Act and the aim of protecting travellers in this new era 6 . At the readings, politicians in general and across political views spoke in favour of the new Act, and the few critical voices heard were more related to the principle of total harmonisation than to the content of the Directive and the Danish implementation. Moreover, the fact that the Danish proposal did not make use of the Member States’ rights provided by the Directive to grant more protection in certain areas was a topic for discussion in the readings in the Danish Parliament. Thus, overall, the implementation of the new Directive into Danish law happened without great controversy. Even so, we shall highlight and discuss a few potential peculiarities of the Danish implementation of the Directive. SCOPE The scope of the Danish PackageTravel Act is extended in line with the Directive. This extension, along with the new category of linked travel arrangements, is regarded as one of the bigger changes compared to the former Danish Package Travel Act. Nevertheless, the extension itself has been well-received. The Danish act is, to a large extent, true to the wording of the Directive, however, in Denmark, the wording has been criticised for being obscure and difficult to understand both for the traveller and the trader. Additionally, the distinction between the two categories of travel arrangements in the Directive is not clear enough and some voices have also indicated that the distinction itself could be contested. INFORMATION In line with all EU consumer protection legislation, information is still an important tool in the new Directive to protect the traveller. In the Danish Act, 6 The Danish People’s Party ended up voting against the Danish Package Travel Act because of the lack of freedom to adapt more protective national rules in the future.