Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-03-08-Speech-1-125"
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"en.20100308.16.1-125"2
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"Mr President, I think we all applauded when the former Commissioner for Consumer Affairs announced on 29 August 2009 that the current directive is totally out of date and does not meet the challenges or the demands of the modern travelling public.
Why is it out of date? Well, these reasons have been enumerated here this evening, but they are worth looking at again. It was fine in its own time but now it is certainly not equipped to meet the modern challenges of the travelling public.
It does not consider consumers self-packaging their holidays, and that has become increasingly the trend. It does not cover consumers based in one country purchasing from suppliers based outside the jurisdiction of the European Union. It does not cover scheduled airlines, and more and more people are now arranging their own package holidays by virtue of the fact that they have easy access to the Internet.
Indeed, over the past number of years, the proportion of holidays that are protected has fallen from about 90% to about 60%. In other words, the current measures do not extend to online travel firms selling foreign holidays with flights and hotels as separate components, a practice referred to by the industry as ‘dynamic packaging’.
We pride ourselves on having a lot of achievements within the EU, and we laud ourselves – quite rightly – on our achievements, but, when you look at the current situation in relation to travel protection, the European Union has the least integrated market for travel services of any modern trading bloc.
There is also considerable confusion as to who accepts liability and when a customer is covered. For example, additional security can be obtained by someone using a credit card, but not if the billing is taking place, for example, in my own country, the Republic of Ireland.
And because of the diversity of products in the marketplace today, a blurring has occurred between airlines, tour operators, cruise operators, agencies and so on, so the new legislation is urgently needed.
What we need is a vastly improved, modern piece of technology by way of the implementation of a new directive to cover all the contingencies. We need clarification, we need certainty, and we need protection for the consumer."@en1
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