Ministers to back tougher tourism laws

Date: 06/04/2000

By Renée Cordes

EU GOVERNMENTS will next week throw their weight behind the European Commission's call for tougher measures to protect holidaymakers from unscrupulous tourism firms.

Consumer ministers will support moves by Consumer Protection Commissioner David Byrne to strengthen the provisions of the Union's existing timeshare and package-holiday legislation when the discuss the issue for the first time at their meeting next Thursday (13 April), and stress the need to clarify the rules.

Byrne called for the laws to be revised in two separate reports published last autumn which pointed to a number of loopholes in the current directives, which were adopted in 1990 and 1994 respectively.

A draft paper set to be approved by ministers states that a "considerable number" of provisions in the package-tour directive allow for significantly different interpretations by individual member states.

It points out, for example, that the legislation leaves it up to member states to decide how to apply rules requiring tour operators which go bankrupt to reimburse holidaymakers. This has resulted in a confusing patchwork of laws, with travellers only able to recover part of their expenses in many cases.

Ministers will also voice concern at next week's meeting about weaknesses in the EU's timeshare directive, which lays down requirements for estate agents who rent out holiday homes and flats for fixed time slots every year.

They will call for the time limit for cancelling contracts to be extended to give consumers a longer 'cooling-off' period before deciding whether to go ahead with the investment and warn that the existing directive does not take account of the development of new products in the burgeoning timeshare market.

EU governments are set to throw their weight behind the European Commission's call for tougher measures to protect holidaymakers from unscrupulous tourism firms.