BELGIUM | OLIVIER DUGARDYN AND CARLA GHISLAIN 79 another cause and then the retailer or organiser goes bankrupt, the insurer should not intervene. This is of particular importance in the context of the COVID-19 health crisis, which has put pressure on insolvency insurers. 3.6. Peculiarities and Inconsistencies of the Belgian Law Recital 21 of the Package Travel Directive provides that: “Member States should remain competent, in accordance with Union law, to apply the provisions of this Directive to areas not falling within its scope. Member States may therefore maintain or introduce national legislation corresponding to the provisions of this Directive, or certain of its provisions, in relation to contracts that fall outside the scope of this Directive. For instance, Member States may maintain or introduce corresponding provisions for certain stand-alone contracts regarding single travel services (such as the rental of holiday homes) or for packages and linked travel arrangements that are offered or facilitated, on a not-for-profit basis to a limited group of travellers and only occasionally, or to packages and linked travel arrangements covering a period of less than 24 hours and which do not include accommodation”. The Belgian legislator has, through the transposition of 2017, decided to make use of this freedom left by the European text. Articles 71-74 of the 2017 Law provide that the sale of a single service falls within the scope of the law. However, there are few obligations arising from the sale of single travel services. In reality, only two obligations are imposed on the single service vendor: 1) to take out insolvency insurance and to inform the traveller of this and 2) to reimburse the traveller in case of non-performance of the service. Nevertheless, when implementing this peculiarity, the Belgian legislator has inserted some inconsistencies in his text. Indeed, for example, Article 72 of the 2017 Belgian Law provides that: “The organiser or retailer who sells travel services separately as an intermediary provides a guarantee for the reimbursement of all payments he receives from or on behalf of travellers in the event that the travel service concerned is not provided due to his insolvency”. However, this sentence is confusing since that, according to the definitions given by the law, to be an organiser or a retailer, the undertaking must sell packages. Here, though, and this is the all point, the undertaking only sells a unique travel service and not a package. Therefore, regarding the definitions of
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