Esther Rippel, Celine Laforsch - QuattroPole e.V. - Luxembourg, Metz, Saarbrücken, Trier, LU, DE, FR

Esther Rippel and Céline Laforsch investigated the origin of the obstacle identified by Quattropole e.V, an association that promotes cross-border tourism among the municipalises of Luxembourg, Metz, Saarbrücken and Trier.

The Advice Case “Cross-border tourism package” (LU, FR, DE) was submitted under the second call for proposals of the pilot initiative b-solutions as local touristic agencies highlighted the impossibility to keep selling cross-border packages due to the new requirements introduced by the Directive 2015/2302 on package travel and linked travel arrangements and its national transpositions.

The field analysis carried out by Rippel and Laforsch shows that obstacle lies mainly in the lack of knowledge of the current EU and national legal frameworks and their facilitative nature. As a  matter of fact, the transpositions of the Directive in the three countries involved are identical and no collision between national rules is observed. On the contrary, they clearly support the internal EU market.

In light of this, the experts suggest to create cross-border coordination points to provide relevant information to the actors engaged in the tourism sector.

The complete overview of Rippel and Laforsch’s analysis is available in the full report here below.

The information here provided have been developed in the framework of b-solutions, an initiative of the European Comission’s DG REGIO managed by the Association of European Border Regions (AEBR).

The reports here included are the result of a consultation provided by legal/cross-border cooperation experts on obstacles of a legal or administrative nature– referred to as Advice Cases - selected in the framework of the II Call for Proposals of the initiative b-solutions.