Collective Commentary about the New Package Travel Directive

LITHUANIA | DANGUOLĖ BUBLIENĖ AND IEVA NAVICKAITĖ-SAKALAUSKIENĖ 991 capital quoted in the statutes. If the legal form of the tour organiser, travel retailer and vendor of linked tourist service arrangement (legal person) is not a public or private limited company, the total financial commitments of the legal person may not exceed his total assets. Then, they must provide, to the supervision institution, a report in the format stipulated by that body containing the information needed to monitor the trader’s activities. In conclusion, it is clear that Lithuanian Law lays down formal requirements for the establishment and fulfilment of the activity of the tour organiser, the travel retailer and the vendor of linked tourist service arrangement. In that respect, authors such as Mulevičienė & Rusinas 28 criticise the definition of the term ‘tour organiser’, alleging that this definition does not correspond to the definition indicated in the Travel Directive. They conclude that the definition of the tour organiser includes two types of persons: the persons who formalise their activity as the tour organisers and the persons who are tour organisers on ad hoc basis. The latter reflects the new concept of the tour organiser introduced by the Travel Directive. Therefore, these authors argue that the new concept is not correctly implemented into the Lithuanian Law and suggest transposing the term of tour organiser verbatim . It might be agreed that the issues concerning the status of tour organiser exist (or at least it might create difficulties for the implementation of the provisions of the Directive), though the national definition found in the Law on Tourism reflects, to some extent, the ideas of the Directive. The tour organiser is defined as “a natural or legal person who creates and sells (offers for sale) package travel directly, via a travel retailer or in conjunction with a travel retailer, or who transmits tourist data to another provider of tourist services in accordance with Article 4 (1) (2) (e) of this Law”. Therefore, the wording reflects the main elements of the tour organiser’s definition described in the Directive, since the tour organiser is the person who (i) creates and sells (offers for sale) package travel directly; (ii) creates and sells (offers for sale) package travel via a travel retailer or in conjunction with a travel retailer; and (iii) transmits tourist data to another provider of tourist services, in accordance with Article 4 (1), (2), (e) of this Law. However, as usual, the devil is in the detail, and this detail is the wording “together with another trader”, included in the definition of travel organiser and indicated in theTravel Directive. This wording is not meaningless, and, in particular, it intends to cover different types of cooperation between traders. However, in Lithuanian Law, the wording 28 Salvija Mulevičienė; Edmundas Rusinas. The problems of Transposition of Travel Directive into national law and its implementation. Jurisprudence, 2019, 26 (1).