LEGAL FRAMEWORK FOR LANGUAGE TRAVEL PROVIDERS – According to the AFS jurisdiction educational services do not automatically qualify as tourist service within the sense of the package travel provisions. – The CJE insinuated not to consider services for educational purposes to be a “tourist service” from a legal perspective. – At least the CJE distinguishes between educational services and tourist services and – stated „services are no tourist service if the specific purpose of a service is the “education of the participants”. 5.1.3. Short-term language courses The mentioned judgment is very helpful. But given the binding decision of the European Court of Justice in this legal matter exclusively referred to “long-term” school stays, the question arises whether if even a short-term language course can be regarded as education? If we go true the wording of the Package Travel Directive in Recital (17) where the long-term language courses are mentioned, we find: “Accommodation for residential purposes, including for long-term language courses, should not be considered as accommodation within the meaning” of the Directive. We can conclude that: – the duration of the stay is important for the legal evaluation if the accommodation serves “residential purposes”, – but the duration, on the other hand, is not relevant for the legal qualification of the educational service itself. Discussing this topic, it is not convincing that language courses can change its character depending on the duration of the stay. If a language course once is considered educational it cannot become a tourist service, even if the overall duration only amounts to a few weeks or if its duration changes into an intensive course or into a crash course. In other words, the nature of the language course itself should be more important than its duration. 5.1.4 Special German regulation for host school stays We have a special German regulation for host school stays which declares Package Travel Law applicable on such exchange programes and provides a particularly strict package travel law on educational exchanges, see Section 651u BGB. What
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