In his draft report on the review of the Package Travel Directive, published on Tuesday 25 February, Alex Agius Saliba MEP (S&D, Maltese) argues that “a balanced approach is needed [...] by combining strong and effective consumer protection with the request to keep rules simple and understandable for businesses”.
With regard to prepayments, the rapporteur sets out in the explanatory memorandum that he is maintaining the limit of 25% of the total price introduced in Article 5a of the Commission proposal. However, he specifies that “this percentage could be higher to cover advance payments to ensure the organisation of the package, like flight tickets or other advance payments to service providers of the package travel organiser”. In addition, the rapporteur introduces the possibility for Member States to create a system of trust accounts in order to secure deposits paid by travellers.
By maintaining this measure, the rapporteur is thus opposing the Council of the EU, which adopted its negotiating position in December (see EUROPE 13549/38), as well as his colleague Jan-Christoph Oetjen (Renew Europe, German). In his draft report opinion, the latter proposed removing the limit on prepayments, arguing that “a standardised rule for advance payments would particularly affect small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which may then be deterred from offering certain products altogether”.
Similarly, Mr Agius Saliba has maintained the concept of “linked travel arrangements” (‘LTAs’), which the Council and Mr Oetjen preferred to abolish in order to simplify travel contracts.
Secondly, Mr Agius Saliba believes that vouchers should be valid for all travel services and that travellers should be able to use them several times and on different occasions. “In order to prevent potential fraud and keep the administrative burden of the use of vouchers reasonable for organisers”, he proposes to limit the transfer of vouchers at no extra cost. From the second transfer onwards, organisers could charge a reasonable fee to cover administrative costs. He thus finds agreement with Mr Oetjen, who said he was “in favour of a more flexible voucher policy”.
To read the draft report, go to https://aeur.eu/f/fon
To read the draft report opinion, go to https://aeur.eu/f/fop (Original version in French by Anne Damiani)