Nieuwe compensatieregeling bootpassagiers mogelijk van invloed op vliegreizigers (en)
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - A new EU regulation on compensation for boat passengers limits the accommodation offered to stranded travellers to three nights at a maximum of €80 per night, a provision which could be mirrored for air passengers following industry pressure.
The boat passenger bill, signed into law by the European Parliament and member states on Thursday (25 November), sets out passenger rights throughout the EU, including the right to information and compensation of 25-50 percent of the ticket price in the case of delay or cancellation of a journey.
For the first time in passenger rights legislation there is a cap on the period and cost of accommodation for stranded boat passengers: up to three hotel nights at a price of maximum €80 per night. Air and rail are already covered under previous initiatives, while a deal on bus passengers is still being negotiated.
Sources close to the negotiations say that in the case of bus passenger rights, the threshold is likely to be even lower, at €60 a night.
The cap is a "fallout" from the volcanic ash cloud crisis which in April saw planes grounded for a week throughout Europe and millions of passengers stranded in various airports.
The current air passenger legislation provides that if flights are cancelled or delayed, passengers are entitled to compensation or re-routing. While waiting for the re-routed flight, passengers have to be put in a hotel by the respective airline. This provision caused an outrage among air companies in April, as they claimed they had to pay "billions" for stranded passengers.
The firms called for an immediate revision of the legislation, saying it was unfair to pay the bill for several hotel nights as long as re-routing was impossible due to grounded planes.
But EU transport commissioner Siim Kallas said he "first wants to see the figures" of how much passenger compensations and accommodation really cost the airlines. A report on the financial impact of the ash cloud is due in January, with changes to the legislation likely to be proposed in 2012.
From a consumer protection point of view, the cap on accommodation sets a bad precedent. "If today's developments limiting the number of nights stay to three is the direction in which the EU intends to travel for air passengers, it would be a source of real concern and consumer dissatisfaction," Monique Goyens, from the European Consumers' Organisation (BEUC i) told EUobserver.
"The recent experience of the ash cloud crisis showed that many travellers were held up for much longer," she added.
Former consumer protection commissioner Meglena Kuneva, currently a special advisor to Mr Kallas on passenger rights, said that even if legislation was setting out several protections, "the main problem remains enforcement."
"Regardless how beautiful our directives are, enforcement is problematic in many member states. It's not even a question of transposing EU directives into national law, we can't even start infringements on that, it's simply enforcement of existing law," she told a group of journalists on Thursday.
Member states will have time until December 2012, two years after publication in the official journal, to transpose the boat passenger rights rules into national law.
Ms Kuneva said there are 414 million boat passengers a year, with Greece and Italy sharing most of them, followed by Denmark, Sweden, the UK and Germany.
Small companies, sight seeing and historical ships, as well as ships with less than 12 passengers and 3 crew members on board are exempt from the costly provisions.
"The same logic will apply to busses and coaches," Ms Kuneva said. Currently, member states and the European Parliament are trying to iron out divergences on the minimum length of a bus trip qualifying under these rules, as local busses are exempt. Member states came up with a "cheeky" proposal of a 500 km minimum - which would leave out regional transport in some 15 member states - while MEPs proposed to start at 50km.
The EU's smallest country, Luxembourg, measures 82 km at its widest part. A deal should be reached next Tuesday, sources say.