REVISION OF THE EUROPEAN PACKAGE TRAVEL DIRECTIVE organiser was in the same position during the COVID-19 pandemic regarding their liquidity. For this reason, the Commission proposed a new provision (Article 22(2) of the proposed Directive) that imposes an obligation on Member States to ensure that organisers get a refund of their payments by service providers if the latter cancel or do not provide a service which is part of the package within 7 days. Such provision that extends the application of the Directive to B2B relationships is indeed very welcome – from the point of view of the organiser and the traveller. Namely, if the organiser gets reimbursed, there is a higher chance that the traveller will get reimbursed as well. IV. OPEN ISSUES AND CONCLUDING REMARKS Proposed revision of the Package Travel Directive is indeed a welcome step forward towards improving EU package travel law taking into consideration experiences from the COVID-19 pandemic. Unfortunately, it is also just that - adapting the text to experiences from emergency situations while failing to take this opportunity to introduce some other changes related to the current tendencies in global tourism such as digitalisation and sustainable development. In this regard, the question arises whether the current version of the Package Travel Directive is so comprehensive that only such changes are needed or (which seems more likely) whether the European legislator intended to put only minimal effort into it so as to align the Directive with CJEU case law. There is no doubt that the proposed rules on advance payments, unavoidable and extraordinary circumstances, refunds, vouchers, insolvency protection and organisers’ rights against service providers were highly needed as the COVID-19 pandemic has shown. Nevertheless, they were mostly created to fit emergency situations. In most cases, the proposed changes are appropriate. However, there is some room for improvement – to give just two examples: (i) the 14-day period for refunds (Article 11(5) of the Directive) turned out to be very short during the COVID-19 pandemic (while extensions determined by national legislations are not permissible according to CJEU case law) and (ii) a requirement of foreseeability and ex ante assessment of unavoidable and extraordinary circumstances should favor consumatoris be included in the wording of the Directive. In addition to package travel, the COVID-19 pandemic has shown how beneficial it would be if harmonised rules on individual travel (especially with regard to accommodation services) and tourism- and hospitality- related services such as concerts, exhibitions, various workshops, well-being
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