The problem of implementation of the European Council Directive 90/314/EEC on Package Travel and Holiday tours

Abstract

The eighties of the 20 century are usually defined as a splash of mass tourism, particularly in the EC countries. There was no effective legal regulation of tourism in Europe though.The first Commission paper on tourism matters was issued in 1982, but the Directive in this field was adopted only in 1990.Seventeen years after adoption of Directive 90/314/EEC on Package Travel and Holiday tours the Author makes an attempt to find out positive and negative features of the document and what effect it has produced.The article is focused basically on the controversial points of the Directive and the problems that were caused by uncertain provisions.The Author asserts that in spite of the achieving the Directive’s aim to set out minimum standards concerning package travel it is not an effective legal instrument at the moment. The Directive has not achieved an effective protection for a tourist because of a very large margin of interpretation for national legislators during the Directive’s implementation. Moreover, the Directive has some weakness in itself and does not regulate some problems (self packaging holidays, less then 24 hours tours and etc.).The author comes to the conclusion that the Directive 90/314/EEC is out of date and needs a reform.