The Commission published yesterday revised interpretative guidelines on air passenger rights that will facilitate compliance with regulations and harmonise enforcement by national bodies. Since 2016, the Commission has been providing guidelines to address common concerns raised by national enforcement bodies, passengers and their associations, and industry representatives. This revision notably takes into account rulings by the Court of Justice since 2016 that clarify certain provisions, allowing for more effective and consistent enforcement of the rules. A new section on massive travel disruptions has also been added.

Revised interpretative guidelines on the rights of persons with disabilities and persons with reduced mobility when travelling by air have also been published.

Passenger rights defined at EU level are applied by transport providers and enforced by national bodies. Disparities between national practices can create confusion for passengers when they face challenges during their journey, especially if it spans EU borders. It can also be difficult for passengers to understand the necessary steps and find appropriate assistance. These guidelines will help improve implementation and complement the Commission's efforts to raise awareness of passenger rights, including through regular online awareness-raising campaigns, the Your Europe web pages and a passenger rights mobile app.

Passengers in need of more information about their rights

These guidelines come together with the release of a new Eurobarometer survey, which highlights that most Europeans still feel that they lack sufficient information on their passenger rights, even if awareness increased compared to five years ago.

Results highlight that respondents were most likely to feel well informed about passenger rights for travel by rail (33%), followed by air (30%), coach (27%) and then ship/ferry (16%). The survey also shows that 84% of respondents requesting assistance for persons with disabilities or reduced mobility were satisfied with the response.

35% of travellers have seen information about passenger rights, up 13 percentage points since 2019. Most commonly, this was in railway stations (9%, +5). 75% of plane passengers received pre-travel information on their rights, compared to 61% for rail, 51% for coaches, and 54% for ships/ferries. Awareness-raising remains extremely important.

Satisfaction with how significant disruptions were handled is highest for flights (66%, +12 pp, followed by ships/ferries (53%, -3 pp), rail (52%, +8 pp), and coaches (50%, +8 pp).

Use of single tickets for multimodal journeys remains limited at 11% (unchanged), with rail/coach (39%, +9 pp) and air/rail (25%, +1 pp) the most common combinations. 32% (+7 pp) faced issues, 13% (+4 pp) almost missed a connection, and 11% (+3 pp) actually missed a connection.

Next steps

The guidelines can now be used by operators and national enforcement bodies. In addition, the results of the Eurobarometer survey, as well as the guidelines, are available to the co-legislators as they consider the two Commission proposals of November 2023 on enforcing passenger rights and on passenger rights in the context of multimodal journeys, as well as the Commission's 2013 legislative proposal on air passenger rights. 

Background

The EU is the only area in the world where passengers are protected by a full set of rights - whether they travel by air, rail, ship or bus and coach. Passenger rights are based on three cornerstones: non-discrimination; accurate, timely and accessible information; immediate and proportionate assistance. This protection is unique in the world.

Eurobarometer is the polling instrument used by EU institutions and agencies to regularly monitor the state of public opinion in Europe on issues related to the European Union as well as attitudes on subjects of political or social nature. This Eurobarometer survey was conducted between 12 January and 4 February 2024, with interviews of 26,601 citizens.