A national court may, under certain conditions, automatically inform a traveller of their right to cancel, free of charge, a package travel contract that has been cancelled in exceptional circumstances, ruled the Court of Justice of the EU in a judgment handed down on Thursday 14 September (Case C-83/22).
The Court of Justice has thus given a preliminary ruling in response to a request from the Spanish courts for an interpretation of Directive (EU) 2015/2302 on package travel and related travel services, following a dispute between a traveller and the travel organisation Tuk-Tuk Travel.
On 12 February 2020, this traveller, who was due to take off from Madrid on 8 March to travel to Vietnam and Cambodia, was forced to cancel the travel contract (signed in 2019) due to the spread of the coronavirus at his destination. The traveller had paid almost half the total price of the trip.
The contract provided information on the possibility of cancellation before the departure date, subject to a fee, but said nothing about the possibility of cancellation without a fee due to exceptional and unavoidable circumstances at the destination. The traveller asked only for refund of expenses already incurred.
In particular, the Spanish court questioned whether, under the Directive, the traveller could be automatically reimbursed for all payments made when he had terminated the contract due to exceptional circumstances. It pointed out that this possibility would be contrary to fundamental principles of Spanish procedural law.
The Court emphasised that the Directive requires a tour operator to inform the traveller, in particular, of his right of cancellation.
It notes that, given the significance of the right to terminate the contract conferred by the directive (and the further right to the full refund of payments made), its effective protection requires that the national court may, of its own motion, claim that this directive has been infringed, in particular where the traveller does not assert his or her right since he or she is unaware of its existence.
To see the judgment: https://aeur.eu/f/8jy (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)