Tourism Law in Europe

1 Travel Law in Slovakia 1 Monika Jurčová 2 I. Introduction; II. General Overview of Tourism Law in Slovakia; III. Holiday Allowance and Vouchers for Employees; IV. Vouchers for Substitute Packages – Special Regulation for COVID- 19; V. Conclusion. I. Introduction This paper aims to provide a brief introduction to tourism law 3 in Slovakia. The first part of the paper is dedicated to the general overview of tourism law in Slovakia. In its second part, this contribution introduces the specific instruments that support Slovak domestic tourism and economy – holiday allowance and vouchers for employees. The final part of the paper outlines the problematic Slovak legislative response to the COVID-19 crisis in the area of package travel contracts. Slovakia belongs to the group of 10 EU Member States where the Commission decided to start infringement proceedings by sending a letter of formal notice 4 . II. General Overview of Tourism Law in Slovakia Slovak tourism and especially transport law have been heavily influenced by the EU law, in line with the legal framework of every EU Member State, as envisaged by the EU proclamation concerning passengers rights: “ The EU is the only area in the world where citizens are protected by a full set of passenger rights - whether they travel by air, rail, ship, bus and coach. Community legislation has therefore been introduced for all modes of transport to protect passenger rights and ensure they are not lost in a myriad of national rules. ” 5 . Therefore, we will omit the enumeration of the relevant EU regulations and directives, focusing solely on the Slovak law of “domestic” origin. By providing a bridge between EU and Slovak law, we should point out to the two acts that represent the transposition of EU directives in the field of travel law: 1 The paper has been prepared under project APVV-17-0562 Platform based contracts. 2 Faculty of Law, Trnava University, Slovakia. Contact : monika_jurcova@yahoo.co.uk. 3 Terms “travel law” and “tourism law” are used synonymously. 4 Source : https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/INF_20_1212. 5 Source : https://ec.europa.eu/transport/facts-fundings/infographics/zero-to-ten_en.