Collective Commentary about the New Package Travel Directive

982 COLLECTIVE COMMENTARY ABOUT THE NEW PACKAGE TRAVEL DIRECTIVE striking the right balance between a high level of consumer protection and the competitiveness of businesses. That aim undoubtedly will have an impact on the interpretation of the provisions of the Directive, having in mind the prohibition to overstep the protection level, which was introduced. It is obvious that minimum harmonisation principle makes it easier for the EU Member States to transpose the provisions of the particular directive into their legislation, as they have “free” hands enough to absorb a directive into the national legal acts. In opposite, the full harmonisation principle does not allow “to turn right or left”, only to move straight to the exact ideas of the Directive within its framework. One could argue, that namely full harmonisation principle creates a simple way for the transposition of the provisions of the Directive, since these provisions could be directly introduced into national law, especially by using a ‘copy-paste’ technique. Despite the fact that this technique is not an alien transposition way in the EU Member States 9 (Lithuania also is not an exception), this approach could not be accepted. It is evident that the legal language and writing of the Directive (especially taking into account that it is, to some extent, the compromise between the different legal cultures of the EU) may differ from the national legal language and writing. The transposed provisions should be in a sustained reading with other national legal provisions. Be as it may, it is not so easy to find the best way (at least the best terminology, sometimes and the concepts) to reflect the exact ideas of the Directive and be in assonance with national legal language and writing. Moreover, as Marco M. B. Loos notes it, the legislatormaynot stop at evaluating the provisions implementing the directive but has to also evaluate its existing legislation and case-law 10 . The authors of this article analyse the Lithuanian way of transposition of the Travel Directive, present the difficulties, which were met, together with emphasising the most controversial issues of the transposition of the Directive into the national law. By the same time, the authors provide with the examples of Lithuanian court practice, which might be important for the application of 9 About the legislative techniques of transposition of consumer directives in Hans Schulte-Nölke, Christian Twigg-Flesner, Martin Ebers. EC Consumer Law Compendium: The Consumer Acquis and its transposition in the Member States. Walter de Gruyter, 2009, p 47. As for example, the UK Government refers to this technique (calling it as copy-out) as to the one of main transposition technique (Transposition Guidance. How to implement European Directives effectively. Issued February 2018, p. 11, available at https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/ government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/682752/eu-transposition-guidance.pdf). 10 Marco M. B. Loos. Full harmonisation as a regulatory concept and its consequences for the national legal orders. The example of the Consumer rights directive. Centre for the Study of European Contract Law, Working Paper Series No. 2010/03, p. 15.