The principle of party autonomy guiding the civil procedure of the Member State, in light of the judge’s ex officio power/duty to raise the Union rule protecting the consumer Carlos Torres1 I. Introduction. – II. The Facts. – III. The omission in Article 5 NPTD. – IV. Questions from the Spanish court about Article 5 NPTD. – V. The role of the CJEU and national courts. – VI. Procedural autonomy and the judge’s ex officio action. – VII. Limits of ex officio judicis. This paper examines how the EU principle of a high level of consumer protection interacts with Member States’ procedural autonomy and the traditional civil procedural principle of party autonomy, using CJEU Case C83/22 (RTG v. Tuk Tuk Travel), concerning package travel cancelled due to COVID19, as a case study. It analyses the omission in the Package Travel Directive (NPTD) of precontractual information about the traveller’s right to terminate for “unavoidable and extraordinary circumstances”, and the Spanish court’s doubts about the validity of Article 5 NPTD and its compatibility with Articles 114 and 169 TFEU. The key finding is that, despite strong consumer-protection objectives, EU law does not generally oblige national judges to grant consumers full refunds ex officio beyond the parties’ claims, thereby preserving procedural autonomy and party disposition as default rules. Keywords: pre-contractual information, party autonomy in civil procedure, judge’s ex officio powers, consumer protection in EU law, unavoidable and extraordinary circumstances, contract termination and refund rights, COVID‑19 pandemic and package travel contracts, procedural autonomy of Member States. DOI 10.60559/ijtthl2026-005 1 Estoril Higher Institute for Tourism and Hotel Studies, email: carlos.torres@eshte.pt
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