The 1994 European Directive
The aim in passing legislation at European level was on the one hand to protect consumers against aggressive sales practices, and on the other hand to stimulate and clean-up the market by informing timeshare buyers about and protecting them from the practices of certain sales representatives. That is why the European Commission issued a Directive in 1994.

Four principles

The European Directive 94/47/EC is based on four main principles:

-buyers benefit from a minimum 10 day cooling-off period, starting from the date the contract was signed. During this period of time, a buyer can cancel the contract;

-no deposit may be paid during the cooling-off period;

-buyers must receive all information related to their timeshare and their rights;

-contracts must be written in the buyer's home country language.

Transposition into national law

Since this Directive is quite minimalist, some countries decided to go further in providing for consumer protection. Globally, we can distinguish two groups:

-most of the northern and central countries of the European Union (Scandinavian countries, Germany, Benelux, United-Kingdom), where we may find most buyers, paid much more attention to a high level of consumer protection, and less to the functioning of the market. Thus, in Belgium, the cooling-off period was extended to 15 working days, sellers of timeshare must register with the Service fédéral Economie, PME, Classes moyennes et Energie XXXX , and at the end of 2002, the scope of the law was extended to short-term contracts(i.e. less than 36 months). For more information: www.mineco.fgov.be , under " consumer protection " and then " timeshare ";

-most southern countries of the Union (Greece, Portugal, Spain and to a limited extent, France) have mainly dealt with market rules and regulations and with the legal status of timeshare, with special attention given to tax issues.

Legislative gaps

The European Directive does not pay sufficient attention to the legal status of timeshare, access to the profession, the financial guarantees that sales representatives and developers should provide, or the issue of timeshare management. Moreover, since the Directive has not been transposed uniformly in the different Member States, there is hardly any harmonisation. Just about each Member State has its own market, its own interpretation of the legislation and its transposition into the national legal order, and above all, its own views on the legal status of timeshare. The Directive hardly tackles new forms of timeshare such as points based programmes, holiday membership cards, holiday clubs or holiday packages (for instance contracts for 35 months or less).

Moreover, in most countries, anybody can sell timeshare, no preliminary authorisation or controlled access to the

profession exists. Similarly, there are few rules or regulations to control or monitor the evolution of maintenance charges (for instance concerning important repairs and renovation work). And then accommodations are not classified according to comfort categories - a good idea would be to create uniform star classifications, as with hotels. Lastly, in the cases of trans-border fraud, legal and judicial instruments are lacking (for example a collective procedure in the interest of a group of victims), co-operation and political will to prosecute and punish unscrupulous timeshare operators.