TRAVEL AGENTS VERSUS AIRLINES IN THE MALTESE COMPETITION LAW 543 verbatim from Regulations 13 of the European Union (EU) Package Travel and LinkedTravel Arrangements Directive (2015/2302), that stipulates: “The organiser is responsible for the performance of the travel services included in the package travel contract, irrespective of whether those services are to be performed by the organiser or by other travel service providers”. The meaning of ‘organiser’ as found under the local Regulation 2 of Subsidiary Legislation 409.19 is that “a trader who combines and sells or offers for sale packages, either directly or through another trader or together with another trader, or the trader who transmits the traveller’s data to another trader in accordance with the definition ‘package’” (Regulation 3 EU Directive). To date, none of the airlines who are selling packages through ‘linked travel arrangements’, within the Maltese jurisdiction, are contributing to the Maltese Insolvency Fund as set up through the Package Travel Insolvency Fund Regulations14. Indeed, it is only the travel agents [and a shipping company] who are selling travel packages that have deposited a bank guarantee to the Insolvency Fund, duly completing the insolvency fund certificates and collecting the money, in order to fulfil all the relative obligations laid out in the Insolvency Fund Regulations, as duly obliged in the PackageTravel andLinkedTravel Arrangements Directive (2015/2302). 14 Subsidiary Legislation 409.18 of the Laws of Malta.
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