Collective Commentary about the New Package Travel Directive

986 COLLECTIVE COMMENTARY ABOUT THE NEW PACKAGE TRAVEL DIRECTIVE discussions between business, consumers and state institutions. As it seems, one of the hardest issues was the necessity of the establishment of the guarantee account. Regarding the transposition of the Travel Directive’s purpose, the working group was established 18 by order of the Ministry of Economy, leaving some discussions at the level of the working group. However, that did not evolve into the broader discussions in media. 2. ISSUES RELATED TO THE TRANSPOSITION OF THE PROVISIONS CONCERNING RATIONE PERSONAE OF THE TRAVEL DIRECTIVE (SUBJECTIVE SCOPE OF APPLICATION) Article 1 of the Travel Directive refers that this directive is applied in respect of contracts between travellers and traders relating to package travel and linked travel arrangements. Hence, the Directive is applied to travellers and traders. That means the scope of application of the Directive very much is dependent on the meaning of these two definitions. Traveller means any person who is seeking to conclude a contract or is entitled to travel on the basis of a contract concluded, within the scope of the Directive (Article 4 (6)) of the Travel Directive). Although the definition of the traveller per se does not contain the reference to the persons travelling for business purposes, the preamble of the Directive clearly refers to this broader definition. As explained in paragraph 7 of the preamble of the Directive, the term ‘traveller’ is broader than the term ‘consumer’: this term shall include business travellers, including members of liberal professions, self-employed or other natural persons, where they do not make travel arrangements on the basis of a general agreement. As the preamble further clarifies, in order to avoid confusion with the definition of the term ‘consumer’ used in other EU legislation, persons protected under the Travel Directive should be referred to as ‘travellers’. However, it seems that this intentional “renaming” creates confusion and some difficulties in the context of transposition of the directive into Lithuanian legislation and later might affect its application. The term ‘traveller’ was transposed into Lithuanian law by the term ‘tourist’. The definition of the tourist can be found in the Law onTourism and is described as “a natural person who seeks to conclude a contract for the provision of the tourist services referred to in this Law or who is entitled to travel under such a 18 The order of the Minister of Economy No. 4-101 as of 5 February 2016.