Tourism Law in Europe

6 therefore, establishes the principles of organisation of tourism services, the conditions and requirements for tourism services and safeguards for the tourists as well as the competence of state or municipal institutions in the tourism area. Since the freedom of individual commercial activity is prevailing constitutional principle in Lithuania, the persons are allowed to engage into the commercial activities which are not prohibited by the law. Therefore, the law does not seek to empower the persons to engage into the commercial activity, rather it aims to establish safeguards which are necessary for the protection of tourists’ interests. Since the tourism activity relates to the economic interests of tourists and may influence them in the negative way, the law establishes the conditions and requirements for the tourism service providers and tourism services as the safeguards for the interests of tourists. It should be noted that historically, there were in Lithuania some efforts to simplify the requirements for the tourism services providers and tourism services: starting from the licensing of the tourism activity, now the requirements are simplified to the declaration on services providers. However, naturally, still there is a space for the discussions how the conditions may be simplified much more and made free from the unnecessary bureaucracy. The requirements for the tourism services are revealed in the third part of this article. Contractual relationship between providers of tourist services and tourists mostly are regulated by the Civil Code of Lithuania. However, some aspects are left in the Law on Tourism as well. Undoubtedly, the legal regulation of tourism was influenced by the accession of Lithuania to the EU. Rules on free movement of persons and services are cornerstones of the EU single market and at the same time provisions enabling the development of tourism in the EU Member States. According to Article 195 of TFEU 16 , the competence of EU on tourism is limited, however, EU still has significant influence on national tourism law at least through its objective to ensure a high level of consumer protection. As Lithuanian national legal traditions in the field of consumer protection is mostly influenced by EU law, national consumer law is based on transposed EU consumer 16 Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union; available in https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal- content/EN/TXT/?uri=celex%3A12012E%2FTXT.