Insurance Europe

Europe’s insurance industry has backed EU plans to revise the Package Travel Directive which seeks to reinforce both passengers’ rights and the insolvency protection of holiday makers given the recent challenges such as the COVID-19 pandemic and bankruptcy of travel companies.

In its position paper, the industry fully agrees that insolvency rules must be ‘clear, unambiguous, and allow flexibility for national specificities’. Nevertheless, Europe’s insurance industry called on the EU to ‘strike the right’ balance in the revision of the Directive between the reinforcement of passenger rights and the protection of travel organisers from bankruptcy.

In its position paper, the insurance industry’s raises a number of key concerns:

1. the revision of the regime of the insolvency protection of travellers could disrupt the stability of the current well-functioning regime;
2. Member States could be able to require mandatory insurance cover for travel organisers which would have adverse effects on organisers and travellers alike; and
3. the legal requirements for vouchers do not ensure enough legal certainty to allow insurers to effectively provide insolvency protection for vouchers.

The revision of the Directive was proposed by the European Commission in 2023. The co-legislators – the Council of the European Union and the European Parliament – will begin negotiations on the revision of the Directive later this year.