REVISION OF THE EUROPEAN PACKAGE TRAVEL DIRECTIVE (Bulgaria, Czechia, Cyprus, Greece, France, Italy, Croatia, Lithuania, Poland, Portugal and Slovakia).6 As summarised by the Commission in its Proposal, there are three major deficiencies of the current Package Travel Directive which were found to be particularly problematic during the COVID-19 pandemic: (i) shortcomings concerning the regulation of refunds for cancelled travel packages, (ii) insufficient protection against organisers’ insolvency and (iii) unclear and excessively complex wording of certain Directive’s provisions that results in difficulties in its implementation into national legal orders.7 Firstly, with regard to refunds, the protection guaranteed by the Directive was found to be inefficient as the travellers were not reimbursed for cancelled packages due to unavoidable and extraordinary circumstances within 14 days. In Slovenia, this deadline was extended by intervention legislation to 12 months from the declaration of the end of the pandemic.8 Moreover, many travellers received vouchers instead of money where they often had no choice.9 However, organisers were often forced to delay reimbursements or to issue vouchers as they had difficulties in retrieving payments from service providers.10 In this regard, it should nevertheless be noted that the Directive only addresses the relationship between travellers and organisers while it does not regulate the relationship between organisers and service providers. Secondly, one of the major problems was also the liquidity of organisers and different insolvency protection systems across the EU that resulted in a different level of protection of travellers across 6 Report from the Commission to the European Parliament and the Council on the application of Directive (EU) 2015/2302 of the European Parliament and of the Council on package travel and linked travel arrangements of 26 February 2021. 7 Proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council amending Directive (EU) 2015/2302 to make the protection of travellers more effective and to simplify and clarify certain aspects of the Directive of 29 November 2023, COM(2023) 905 final, pp. 5 and 6. 8 Art. 101.a (5) of the Act Determining the Intervention Measures to Contain the COVID19 Epidemic and Mitigate its Consequences for Citizens and the Economy, Official Gazette of the Republic of Slovenia 49/20 with further amendments. 9 Commission Recommendation (EU) 2020/648 of 13 May 2020 on vouchers offered to passengers and travellers as an alternative to reimbursement for cancelled package travel and transport services in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, C/2020/3125, OJ L 151 of 14 May 2020. See also: Klára Dvořáková, The Czech Fight over Vouchers. 10 Proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council amending Directive (EU) 2015/2302 to make the protection of travellers more effective and to simplify and clarify certain aspects of the Directive of 29 November 2023, COM(2023) 905 final, p. 8.
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