Important legal notice

61997C0237

European Court reports 1999 Page I-00825

Opinion of the Advocate-General

Do student exchanges abroad fall within the scope of the Community directive on package travel? This is essentially the question which the Korkein hallinto-oiekus (the Finnish Supreme Administrative Court) has referred to this Court in the present case.

The Community legislation

The purpose of Council Directive 90/314/EEC of 13 June 1990 on package travel, package holidays and package tours (1) (hereinafter `the Directive') is, as stated in Article 1, to approximate the laws, regulations and administrative provisions of the Member States relating to packages sold or offered for sale in the territory of the Community.

Under Article 2(1) of the Directive, a package means the pre-arranged combination of not fewer than two of the following: transport, accommodation and other tourist services not ancillary to transport or accommodation and accounting for a significant proportion of the package. The provision goes on to state that the separate billing of various components of the same package does not absolve the organiser or retailer from its obligations under the Directive. Further, the package must be sold or offered for sale at an inclusive price and the services included must cover a period of more than 24 hours or include overnight accommodation.

The remaining paragraphs of Article 2 contain further definitions which relate to the parties to the contractual relationship. An organiser is `the person who, other than occasionally, organises packages and sells or offers them for sale, whether directly or through a retailer'. A retailer is `the person who sells or offers for sale the package put together by the organiser', and, finally, a consumer is `the person who takes or agrees to take the package ("the principal contractor"), or any person on whose behalf the principal contractor agrees to purchase the package ("the other beneficiaries") or any person to whom the principal contractor or any of the other beneficiaries transfers the package ("the transferee").

The provisions which follow clarify the content of the respective rights and obligations which fall to the parties upon the conclusion of a contract relating to a `package', and the duties in regard to information imposed upon the retailer or organiser in the pre-contractual phase. These provisions are for the most part directed at the stronger of the parties to the contract (the retailer and/or organiser of the package) and their aim is to protect the consumer. For the purposes of the present case, the provisions set out in Article 4(1)(b)(iii) and Article 4(3) warrant explicit mention. The first provides that, in the case of journeys or stays abroad by minors, the organiser and/or retailer must provide the consumer, in writing or any other appropriate form, in good time before the start of the journey, with information enabling direct contact to be established with the child or the person responsible at the child's place of stay. The second provides that, where the consumer is prevented from proceeding with the package, he may transfer his booking, having first given the organiser or the retailer reasonable notice of his intention before departure, to a person who satisfies all the conditions applicable to the package.

The next significant article is Article 7 of the Directive, according to which `the organiser and/or retailer party to the contract shall provide sufficient evidence of security for the refund of money paid over and for the repatriation of the consumer in the event of insolvency'. (2)

Lastly, Article 9 requires Member States to bring into force the measures necessary to comply with the Directive before 31 December 1992. In the case of the Republic of Finland, however, under the Act of Accession of the Republic of Austria, the Republic of Finland and the Kingdom of Sweden, the time-limit fixed for implementation was 1 January 1995. The Directive has been transposed into Finnish law, within the time-limit and, as far as can be established, faithfully, with two separate instruments: the valmismatkalaki (Law No 1079/1994 on package travel) and the valmismatkaliikelaki (Law No 1080/1994 on package travel firms).

The facts of the case and the questions referred for a preliminary ruling

The case before the national court is brought by AFS Intercultural Programs Finland (hereinafter `the Association'), a non-profit-making association established under Finnish law. The Association's object is, according to its statutes, to promote international co-operation and exchanges between various cultures. To this end, the Association, like its sister organisations in other countries, organises international student-exchange programmes, arranging for Finnish students to stay abroad and for foreign students to stay in Finland. The students who participate in the programme are between 16 and 18 years of age and the length of their stay abroad varies from 6 to 11 months.

The Association arranges transport for the students to the country of their destination using regular scheduled flights. The students lodge with families selected in advance by the Association, which put them up free of charge. The Association also organises short preparatory courses and occasional joint programmes for the young people attending the courses. During their stay abroad, the students attend local schools. Local volunteers are responsible for organisational matters in the host country.

As regards the financial arrangements between the parties, it should be noted that the students are required to pay a deposit of approximately 10% of the total cost on admission to the exchange programme, that is to say about ten months before their leaving. The balance is then paid in three instalments before the beginning of the visit. On departure, the student receives a pre-paid return air ticket.

The dispute before the national court arises from a request addressed to the Association by the Kuluttajavirasto (or Consumer Protection Office, hereinafter referred to as `the Office') to register in the register of travel organisers set up under the aforementioned Finnish law relating to package travel firms. That law, which, as mentioned, was enacted to implement the Directive, provides that the business of package travel organiser can only be conducted by natural or legal persons, or branch offices of foreign companies or foundations, authorised to operate in Finland, and it is to this end that organisers are required to register in an appropriate register. Article 2 of the Law explains that the business in question is the organising, offering or procuring of package travel. The Law assigns to the Office the task of checking that agencies operating in Finland comply with the requirements laid down by the Law, among them being the obligation to provide appropriate security so that consumers of package services are guaranteed the refund of money paid over and their repatriation in the event of the organiser's insolvency. (3) Under the Finnish law, the Office may also prohibit the conduct of such business by any person who is not registered in the register and who has not, therefore, provided the requisite security. It may also impose fines for breach of the requirement to register.

Pursuant to the provisions just mentioned, the Office requested the Association to register in the register of package travel organisers. In the Office's opinion, the inclusive services offered to the students, comprising the journey, the stay with the host family and other ancillary services including the preparatory course for the students concerning the characteristics of the host country, constitute a `package' to which the provisions relating to package travel had therefore to be applied.

The Association did not comply with the request to register, and for this reason, by its decision of 14 October 1996, the Office ordered the suspension of the Association's business as organiser of package travel and threatened a fine of FIM 100 000 should that decision not be complied with.

The Association then applied to the Finnish Supreme Administrative Court for an order annulling the decision. It maintained, first, that it did not carry on the business of package travel organiser, in that the student exchanges could not be classified as package services as defined by the Directive and by the national transposing legislation, and secondly that it did not provide transport and accommodation or transport and other tourist services for an inclusive price, and so the conditions laid down by Article 2 of the Directive and by the corresponding national provisions were not satisfied.

On the premise that the national law must be interpreted and applied in accordance with the Directive's provisions, the Finnish Supreme Administrative Court referred to this Court the following questions for a preliminary ruling:

(1) Does a student exchange of approximately six months' or one year's duration, the purpose of which, so far as the student is concerned, is not a holiday or tourism but to attend an educational establishment in a foreign country and familiarise himself with the people and culture of that country by staying free of charge with a local family as a family member fall, wholly or in part, within the scope of Council Directive 90/314/EEC of 13 June 1990 on package travel, package holidays and package tours? Are certain characteristics which indicate the non-commercial nature of the organiser of the exchanges, such as the facts that participants in the exchange programme are only required to pay part of the costs of the programme, that the exchanges are devised by way of collaboration between non-profit-making associations in various countries, and that they rely largely upon voluntary work and are financed with public funds set aside for cultural activities, relevant to the question whether the student exchanges fall within the Directive's scope?

(2) In the event that the student exchanges do fall within the general scope of the Directive, the Court is then asked to answer the following questions concerning the detailed interpretation of Article 2:

The first question referred for a preliminary ruling

The first question concerns the scope of the Directive. The national court points to certain circumstances which, in its view, cast doubt upon whether the services offered by the Finnish Association are package services within the meaning of the Law on package travel organisers enacted to implement the Directive. More specifically, the following circumstances are concerned: first, the duration of the visit, which varies from six months to a year; secondly, the reason for the visit, which is not undertaken for tourist purposes or as a holiday, but in order to attend an educational establishment in a foreign country and to get to know the way of life of the people of that country. Also, there is the fact that the organiser's business is not conducted in order to make a profit, and lastly, the circumstance that the student pays only part of the costs of the programme and that the State contributes to those costs, using sums set aside for cultural activities.

I would at once say that the features just mentioned are not, in my opinion, of a type such as to exclude the travel in question from the scope of the Directive. To demonstrate this, I shall first of all review the objective aspects of the case which relate to the particular features of the services offered for sale by the Association, and then the subjective elements, relating to the Association itself.

As regards the particular features of the services offered, one must first consider the objection raised by the Association in the main proceedings and espoused before this Court by the United Kingdom Government, namely that student visits which form part of an exchange programme and which are therefore characterised, on the one hand, by the fact that their purpose is not typically that of tourism but, in a broad sense, education, do not fall within the scope of the Directive. In other words, the scope of the Directive's application is, it is alleged, limited to a specific category of package services, that is, those which clearly have a touristic purpose, whereas visits for the purpose of attending an educational establishment in a foreign country and thus getting to know the culture of and way of life in that country are, it is argued, by definition excluded. In support of this interpretation, the Association and the United Kingdom Government point out that, in several places in the preamble to the Directive reference is made to the `tourist sector' (4) and to the need to introduce a `Community policy on tourism'. (5) In their opinion, this demonstrates an intention on the part of those who drafted the Directive to limit its scope and therefore also the protection it affords to consumers of package services, to travel undertaken for reasons of tourism.

I do not believe that the matters just set out are sufficient to win support for the argument put forward by the Association and the United Kingdom Government. It is necessary to start from the premiss that the interpretation of the provisions of the directive in question must be informed by the principle, of general application, that, in cases of doubt, its provisions must be interpreted as far as possible in favour of the persons for whom the protection is intended, that is to say consumers of package services. (6) That conclusion is reached on the basis of a systematic analysis of the text and the objectives of the Directive and in light also of its preamble. (7) Consequently, the provisions which define the Directive's scope must be interpreted in the broadest possible sense, in order to reduce the risk of the protection which the Directive aims to provide to consumers of the services under consideration from being evaded.

The purposes of the Directive, its wording and the preparatory work leading up to it (8) disclose nothing to suggest that its scope is limited exclusively to tourist services. Since the Directive is a measure for the harmonisation of national laws which has as its main objective the protection of the weaker party to the travel contract, it is clear that all package services sold within the territory of the Community are subject to those requirements of consumer protection which justify the application of the protective provisions referred to in the Directive. As for the wording of the Directive itself, it is clear even from its title that it applies to package travel, package holidays and package tours, and this plainly means that there are types of travel included within the Directive's scope of application which are not undertaken for the purpose of holidays in the strict sense. Article 2(4) of the Directive, which contains a definition of `consumer', also militates in favour of a broad interpretation of the scope of the Directive. As observed by the Finnish Government, that provision does no more than state that `consumer' means the person who takes or agrees to take the package, (9) as defined in Article 2, without laying down any requirements with respect to the purposes of the travel, and indeed this is quite different from what one finds in certain other directives aimed at protecting the consumer in which the concept of `consumer' is expressly limited to `any natural person who acts for purposes other than those of his professional business'. (10)

Moreover, even if one were to concede that the Directive meant only to deal with services in the nature of tourism, (11) I do not think that this justifies, in any event, the conclusion proposed by the plaintiff in the main proceedings and by the United Kingdom Government. The problem would immediately arise of defining the concept of tourism, the answer to which appears to be anything but clear-cut. It is manifestly not equivalent to that of holidays. There can, of course, be cultural tourism, social tourism, environmental tourism and so on. (12) Moreover, a single journey may appear in the eyes of the person undertaking it as a holiday or as a form of cultural enrichment, for example. It would therefore seem quite arbitrary to define tourist services by reference to the purpose of the package travel. Consequently, there would be no justification for limiting the protection which the Directive aims to provide to all consumers of package services only to those cases where services are offered to holiday travellers.

The scope of the Directive application cannot, therefore, be defined by reference to the purpose of the travel. There is nothing, either in the wording of the Directive or related to its objectives, that can be prayed in aid, to support the conclusion that only `recreational' travel is protected under the substantive rules of the Directive and that travel for other purposes (business, conferences, family visits, study, to name but a few) is by definition excluded and therefore not subject to the consumer-protection provisions contained in the Directive. Quite apart from the obvious difficulties of identifying the intentions of those who enter into package-travel agreements, the need to prevent the risk, mentioned earlier, of the protection which the Directive aims to provide being evaded militates in favour of not ascribing any importance to the purposes for which the travel is undertaken.

I think that one can usefully refer to Article 4(1) of the Directive in order to confirm that solution. That provision concerns the obligation to provide information which is imposed upon the organiser and/or retailer of the package services. Article 4(1)(b)(iii) expressly refers to journeys and stays abroad by minors, and requires organisers and retailers to provide `information enabling direct contact to be established with the child or the person responsible at the child's place of stay'. In this connection, it should be noted, first, that that provision refers to stays abroad by minors; stays the specific purpose of which, as practice demonstrates, is study (the study of the culture of the host country, the language and so on). The second point to be noted is that the steps which the provision generally requires the organiser of the service to take are, significantly, the very steps which the Association voluntarily takes on behalf of the students admitted to the exchange programme.

24The substantive scope of the Directive can, therefore, only be ascertained by reference to the provisions contained in Articles 1 and 2. Thus the services must first of all be `sold or offered for sale in the territory of the Community' (Article 1). Secondly, they must be `package' services in the sense that what is offered to the consumer must include no fewer than two of the following: transport, accommodation, and other tourist services not ancillary to transport or accommodation and accounting for a significant proportion of the package. Next, these components must be combined in advance by the organiser of the services in question and this `pre-arranged combination' must be sold or offered for sale at an inclusive price. Finally, the services offered for sale must, as a minimum, requirement, last for 24 hours or include overnight accommodation. If all these elements are present in the services offered to students by the Association - and it is a matter for the national Court to establish this - then the protection offered by the Directive must be guaranteed to the consumers as the weaker parties to the contract, and any other aspects, such as the purposes of the journey or the duration of the stay, can have no relevance.

25As to the other aspects which the national court mentions in its order for reference and which relate to the special nature of the organiser of the study visits abroad, I do not think that these are such as to justify the exclusion of the services in question from the scope of the Directive. I refer above all to the non-commercial character of the Association's business. In this connection, the national court observes that the Association does not operate for profit and that those taking part in the exchange programme are only required to pay part of the costs, as the exchanges are partly financed from funds set aside by the State for cultural activities.

26On this point, it must first and foremost be borne in mind that the definition of an organiser of package services given in Article 2(2) contains no mention of whether the activity undertaken is commercial or not. (13) That aspect therefore is of no significance for the purpose of identifying the persons to whom the Directive is intended to apply.

27The preparatory work for the Directive confirms the interpretation just proposed. The definition of an organiser, included in the final text of the Directive, is the result of the acceptance in the Common Position of the Council of an amendment proposed by the Economic and Social Committee. The original text of the Commission's proposal defined an organiser as `the person who in the course of his business, organises the package and offers it by means of brochures, or other forms of advertising, to the public generally'. (14) In its Opinion, adopted on 23 February 1989, the Economic and Social Committee said it wished to see the definition re-examined, as it considered the one given in the Commission's proposed text unsatisfactory for the very reason that, in referring to the organiser's business, it did `not include non-professional organisers such as private clubs'. (15)

28Once it is accepted that the commercial or non-commercial nature of the organiser's business has no bearing upon whether the Directive applies, it must then follow that the circumstances, mentioned by the national court, relating to the fact that the accommodation is supplied free of charge and that the participants in the programme arranged by the Association are only required to pay part of the related costs, can have no effect upon the solution proposed. I have already expressed this view in the Opinion I delivered in Rechberger, (16) where I stated that package services do fall within the scope of the Directive even where the consumer is not required to pay a price which corresponds to the economic value of the services offered in return or where the monetary consideration demanded from the consumer is imputed to one part of the package only. For the same reasons, the fact that the Association's business relies in part upon the work of volunteers is similarly irrelevant to determining the persons covered by the Directive. What matters, in short, is simply whether the conditions set out in the Directive are met: an organiser is any person who, other than occasionally, organises packages and sells or offers them for sale, whether directly or through a retailer.

29My conclusion, therefore, is that travel which falls within the scope of the Directive includes travel in the context of a student-exchange programme of between six months' and one year's duration, undertaken for the purpose of attending an educational establishment and acquiring familiarity with the people and culture of another country through staying with a local family. The non-commercial nature of the business carried on by the organiser of the services, and in particular the facts that the exchanges are arranged by way of collaboration between non-profit-making associations in various Member States and that they are financed using funds set aside by the State for cultural activities, are irrelevant in this regard. Similarly, the fact that those who benefit from the exchange programme are only required to pay part of the related costs is irrelevant.

The second question referred for a preliminary ruling

30The conclusion I have reached permits me to go on to examine the second question submitted by the Finnish court for a preliminary ruling. That court requests the interpretation of a particular provision of the Directive (Article 2(1)) which sets out the elements comprising a package service which are of relevance to determining whether the Directive applies.

31As will be remembered, under Article 2(1), a package is the pre-arranged combination of not fewer than two of the following: transport, accommodation, and other tourist services not ancillary to transport or accommodation and accounting for a significant proportion of the package. The national court therefore wishes to know whether this test is satisfied notwithstanding the special features of the case before it.

32On this point, one must first take into account a general objection raised by the Commission which disputes that there is, in the present case, a `pre-arranged combination' of the necessary components of a package. In the Commission's submission there is no such pre-arranged combination, in that the student visits organised by the Association proceed upon the basis of the individual selection of students admitted to the exchange programme in light of their personal qualities. In order to be admitted, the student's personality is assessed together with his ability to adapt to the place where the programme will take place and to the intended host family.

33In the Commission's submission, therefore, participation in the study visits is not based upon objective factors. Consequently, it is not possible in the present case to apply Article 4(3) of the Directive by virtue of which the consumer may, where he is prevented from proceeding with the package, transfer his booking to a person who satisfies all the conditions applicable to the package in question.

34The Commission's reasoning is unconvincing. It seems to me that the wording of the provision just mentioned admits of a different interpretation. The right which the Directive confers upon the consumer to transfer his rights and obligations under the contract may be exercised only in favour of `a person who satisfies all the conditions applicable to the package'. The Directive itself thus recognises that compliance with specific requirements - which may also relate to personal qualities - may operate as a sine qua non for participation in certain package travel. Some journeys, including, typically, `pleasure trips', are organised for members of certain professions or associations, or for students of a school, or persons of a certain age group, and so on. Clearly, in the case of this type of `reserved' travel, the right of transfer provided for in Article 4(3) is not an absolute right. It can only be exercised in favour of persons who satisfy the requirements for participating in the journey in question. This means that, in all such cases, the organiser is only required to accept substitution by particular persons. I do not, on the other hand, think there are any grounds for maintaining that the protection afforded by the Directive to consumers of package services - and in particular the protection concerning security for the refund of money paid over and for repatriation - must be excluded merely because the consumer cannot, with respect to this particular type of travel, transfer his rights and obligations under the contract to any person he chooses. This would lead to a reduction, for no valid reason, in the scope of protection, incompatible with the ratio of the Directive which, as already mentioned, demands a broad interpretation of the provisions which define its scope.

35Now that it has been shown that the right conferred upon the consumer by Article 4(3) of the Directive is relatively limited, and once it has been made clear that such limitation arises from the wording of the provision itself, it may also be concluded that, in respect of certain package services, the criteria for participation may be so restrictive and exclusive as to prohibit substitution, or to permit it only in truly exceptional cases, without this at all affecting the applicability of the Directive in general. In the case before us, a transfer could only be made in favour of someone who is selected by the Association to take part in the exchange programme, but clearly, because of the nature of the service and the personal relationship which is established with the host family, the family's consent is nevertheless required. The extreme difficulty, or even impossibility, of applying a provision of the Directive to a given type of package services - and it is a difficulty which is implicitly anticipated in the text of the Directive itself - is certainly not a circumstance which can exclude those services outright from the scope of the Directive, provided, of course, that in every other respect the services in question meet the requirements laid down by the provisions of the Directive.

36Since it has been made clear that the requirement of the `pre-arranged combination' of the elements which make up the package is not eliminated by reason of the special relationship which is established between the Association, the student and the host family, it is necessary to examine more closely the content of the second question referred for a preliminary ruling. By that question, the national court is essentially asking for clarification whether a stay free of charge and of long duration, with a family, where the guest is treated almost as a child of the family, is to be regarded as `accommodation' within the meaning of Article 2(1)(b) of the Directive.

37I think that the answer to this question must be affirmative. It has already been seen that the duration of the package and the fact that it is, in part, free of charge, are entirely irrelevant to determining the scope of the Directive. It is sufficient, for this purpose, that the package is sold or offered for sale at a price which is referable to the package as a whole. The definition of `accommodation', in its turn, clearly covers any kind of accommodation, whether it be in a hotel, with a family, in a hostel, or wherever. The duration of the accommodation is of no importance in the scheme of the Directive, which, in this regard, does no more than lay down a minimum limit: the whole service offered to the consumer must last not less than 24 hours or must at least include overnight accommodation. By the same logic, the fact that the student is received into the family with which he boards as if he were a child of the family, is also of no consequence.

38Now that it has been established that the two `typical' components of a package, that is, transport and accommodation, are present in the services offered by the Association, the last question referred to this Court by the national court, concerning Article 2(1)(c) of the Directive, no longer has any real importance. I would merely point out, therefore, that some of the services mentioned in the order for reference, including the preparation of documentation relating to the host country and the short course given in preparation for the visit abroad, could, in principal, come within the definition of `other tourist services' set out in the provision just mentioned, provided that they account for a significant proportion of the package. Whether that condition is satisfied is a matter for the national court to determine.

39On the basis of the foregoing considerations, I therefore propose that the Court give the following answers to the questions referred to it by the Korkein hallinto-oikeus:

1)(1) Travel undertaken in a foreign country in the context of a student-exchange programme of between six months' and one year's duration, with a view to attending an educational establishment and acquiring familiarity with the people and culture of that country by staying with a local family, falls within the scope of Council Directive 90/314/EEC of 13 June 1990 on package travel, package holidays and package tours. On the other hand, the non-commercial nature of the business carried on by the organiser of the package and the fact that the beneficiary of the exchange programme is only required to pay part of the related costs are irrelevant in that regard.

2)(2) 2.1 A long-term stay, free of charge, with a family, even if the guest is treated almost like a child of the family, is to be regarded as `accommodation' within the meaning of Article 2(1)(b).

(1)- OJ 1990 L 158, p. 59.

(2)- The Court has already ruled upon the interpretation of Article 7 of the Directive in Joined Cases C-178/94, C-179/94, C-188/94, C-189/94 and C-190/94 Dillenkofer and Others [1996] ECR I-4845, and in Case C-364/96 Verein für Konsumenteninformation [1998] ECR I-2949. The interpretation of the same provision is also in issue in Case C-140/97 Rechberger and Others v Republic of Austria, which is currently pending before the Court, and in which I gave my Opinion on 25 June 1998.

(3)- These are the consumer rights set out in Article 7 of the Directive and referred to in section 6 above.

(4)- See the first recital where it is stated that `one of the main objectives of the Community is to complete the internal market, of which the tourist sector is an essential part'. In the seventh recital it is also stated that `tourism plays an increasingly important role in the economies of the Member States' and that `the package system is a fundamental part of tourism'.

(5)- The fifth recital states: `whereas in the resolution on a Community policy on tourism on 10 April 1984 the Council welcomed the Commission's initiative in drawing attention to the importance of tourism and took note of the Commission's initial guidelines for a Community policy on tourism'.

(6)- See paragraphs 33 to 39 of the judgment in Dillenkofer, and sections 11 to 14 of the Opinion of Advocate General Tesauro. I believe that this principle of interpretation in the sense most favourable to the consumer is also confirmed by the judgment in Verein für Konsumenteninformation, cited above, in particular at paragraphs 18 to 23 where the Court interpreted broadly the scope of the consumer's right to the refund of money paid over and to repatriation, `having regard to the objectives of the Directive, in particular those of Article 7' (paragraph 20).

(7)- For an exposition of the provisions of the Directive which permits one to form the principle of interpretation in question, I would refer to section 17 of and footnotes 5 to 7 to the Opinion in Rechberger cited in footnote 2.

(8)- See the proposal submitted by the Commission to the Council on 23 March 1988 (OJ 1988 C 96, p. 5) and the statement of reasons for that proposal as set out in document COM(88) 41 final, the opinion of the Economic and Social Committee of 23 February 1989 (OJ 1989 C 102, p. 27) and the opinion of the European Parliament, on first reading, of 15 February 1989 (OJ 1989 C 69, p. 95) and its opinion on second reading, of 16 May 1990 (OJ 1990 C 149, p. 86).

(9)- And also any person on whose behalf the principal contractor agrees to purchase the package or any person to whom the principal contractor or any of the other beneficiaries transfers the package.

(10)- See Council Directive 85/577/EEC of 20 December 1985 to protect the consumer in respect of contracts negotiated away from business premises (OJ 1985 L 372, p. 31) (the first paragraph of Article 2); Council Directive 87/102/EEC of 22 December 1986 for the approximation of the laws, regulations and administrative provisions of the Member States concerning consumer credit (OJ 1987 L 42, p. 48) (Article 1(2)(a)); Council Directive 93/13/EEC of 5 April 1993 on unfair terms in consumer contracts (OJ 1993 L 95, p. 29) (Article 2(b)); Directive 94/47/EC of the European Parliament and the Council of 26 October 1994 on the protection of purchasers in respect of certain aspects of contracts relating to the purchase of the right to use immovable properties on a timeshare basis (OJ 1994 L 290, p. 83) (Article 2); Directive 97/7/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 20 May 1997 on the protection of consumers in respect of distance contracts (OJ 1997 L 144, p. 19) (Article 2(2)).

(11)- It should be noted in this regard that in certain language versions of the Directive, Article 2(1)(c) refers to `other tourist services' not ancillary to transport or accommodation. According to the plaintiff in the main proceedings and the United Kingdom Government, this demonstrates that, in order for the package to fall within the scope of the Directive, the other two components, transport and accommodation, must also be offered to the consumer in the context of services in the nature of tourist services. In this connection, besides what is expressly set out in the text of the Directive to define tourist services, it should be noted that not all of the language versions correspond to the French, English and Italian versions. For example, the Finnish version refers to `other travel services', a concept which appears broader than that expressed by `other tourist services'.

(12)- See, in this connection, Council Decision 92/421/EEC of 13 July 1992 on a Community action plan to assist tourism (OJ 1992 L 231, p. 26). The Annex to the Decision refers to Community action in the fields of cultural tourism, rural tourism, social tourism and youth tourism. In relation to the last of these, the Decision states that `Community action in this field is, through support for existing Community policies, aimed both at promoting young people's knowledge of cultures and lifestyles in the various Member States and at making it easier for young people to take holidays'. Clearly this wording suggests the possibility of combining, in a single tourism measure, recreational, educational and cultural aspects.

(13)- The provision in fact only requires that the activity be other than occasional, and I think that that requirement is met in the case before the national court.

(14)- See Article 2 of the proposal, cited above at footnote 8.

(15)- See paragraph 2.2(b) of the Opinion cited at footnote 8. It is also highly significant that the Council did not accept an amendment proposed by the Parliament which also related to the definition of organiser, namely that `this directive will not apply to non-commercial package tours organised by bona fide voluntary groups within a Member State'. (See amendment No 5 of the opinion of the European Parliament on first reading cited at footnote 8.)

(16)- Cited above at footnote 2. See, in particular, sections 18 and 20.