International

Tomorrow in the Internal Market Committee we will vote on airline passengers’ rights. In the Netherlands there has been a great deal of fuss about this. Claims from passengers are almost routinely rejected by the airline companies as a result of the alleged lack of clarity over what precisely passengers’ rights involve. The European Parliament is now trying to get rid of this confusion and in order to do this has adopted an approach which puts the passengers’ interests to the fore. The hope is therefore that this summer it will be easier for people travelling to and from holiday destinations to receive compensation without too much rigmarole.

In itself, you wouldn’t think that it would be so difficult for airline companies to compensate passengers who experience delays or cancellations to their flights. Yet in practice there are exceptions to the right to reimbursement: ‘unforeseen circumstances’ mean that the airline has no obligation to reimburse; and the meaning of this expression being open to interpretation, its definition differs from one member state to another. Tomorrow we will vote on a report which will clarify this, as well as stating that passengers must not only be properly informed of their rights, but that a disputes or arbitration board must be established in order to make it easier for passengers to submit their claims. This will put an end to the boycott of such bodies by certain airline companies. In short, the report should be advantageous all round.

I have, moreover, tried to ensure via my own proposals that a number of quite justified demands from Dutch national carrier KLM and other companies are taken into account. It’s not unreasonable, for example, in cases where a flight from a distant destination by an aircraft must return next day to the Netherlands, to treat the outward and return flights as one and the same, so that if the outward flight has been postponed as a result of what are accepted to have been unforeseen circumstances, then this judgement will also be valid for the return flight. This makes the package more even-handed. The most important thing, however, is that there will soon be clarity for all sides as to when you can and when you cannot count on receiving compensation. In this way, situations such as those which arose during the Icelandic volcanic ash crisis will be avoided in future.

Finally, the report will clarify matters when it comes to disabled people’s rights. In the past the SP has been extremely critical of the ‘obesity tax’, the obligation for seriously overweight people to book two seats. The report sends this type of proposal straight to the waste-paper basket. Everyone has the same rights and if in practice two seats are needed, this is a risk which the airlines - which after all often provide people with extremely small seats - and not the passenger must bear.