Brussels, 06/12/2011 (Agence Europe) - The European Union is the first part of the world where passenger rights exist for all forms of transport. This is a source of no small pride to EU Transport Commissioner Siim Kallas, but he wants to go much further. To ensure even higher standards of passenger well-being and a fairer market, the Commissioner will be opening a public consultation exercise in the near future on air passenger rights, as he explained at a conference on passenger rights until the year 2020, organised at the Katholieke Universiteit van Leuven in Belgium.
Passengers' entitlement to information, compensation and reimbursement or help in the form of board and lodging, as provide guarantees for an ideal transport service, but the Commissioner says that key issues need to be addressed, like deciding what constitutes an “extended delay” and a “short delay” and deciding on “exceptional circumstances”, or what the EU should do for passengers in the event of a strike by air traffic controllers or a natural disaster.
To deal with problems of interpretation, which can be contentious (no fewer than 13 cases are pending at the European Court of Justice in this connection at the moment), the commissioner wants clearer rules. He also says the rules currently in force should be applied in a more uniform manner throughout the EU. This is not only vital for passengers, but also to prevent an uneven playing field being set up within the EU. Kallas says the public deserves better information about things like how easy it is to make a complaint, although the European Commission's public awareness raising campaign last year has made some excellent progress in ensuring people in Europe know about their rights.
Air passenger rights are nothing new and in fact, air passenger were given rights before passengers using other forms of transport. For this reason, the EU has the greatest expertise in air travel rights. Kallas is planning to launch a public consultation exercise to build on this by examining EU Regulation 261/2004 on passenger rights in the event of delays and cancellations. The consultation is expected to begin before Christmas. (MD/transl.fl)