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Professor Adam Lazowski: ‘Court rewrote EU legislation’
ECJ ‘breached its remit by backing air-delay payouts’
A LEADING LAW PROFESSOR HAS HITOUT AT THE EUROPEAN COURT OF JUSTICEOVER AIR PASSENGER RIGHTS. IAN TAYLOR REPORTS
The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has “gambled its legitimacy” by “judicial lawmaking” in its rulings on air passenger rights.
That is the view of Professor
Adam Lazowski of Westminster Law School, who said last week: “The court rewrote EU legislation.” ECJ judgments have infuriated
airlines and left specialist law firms claiming passengers are entitled to billions of pounds in compensation for flight delays.
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travelweekly.co.uk 11 February 2016 Cheshire-based solicitors
Bott & Co suggested last month that 10.8 million passengers travelling to or from the UK in the past six years are entitled to compensation, with payouts averaging €434 per passenger. Rights to compensation from
airlines stem from EU Regulation 261/2004. This entitled passengers to compensation for denied boarding or cancellation, but only to assistance for delays. “That is what the ECJ revoked,”
said Lazowski. (The court extended compensation to flight delays of three hours or more in a 2009 ruling.) In a lecture at the University of
Westminster, Professor Lazowski said: “The Court of Justice is not supposed to write the law. [But] it added a piece of legislation that simply did not exist. “Its adoption was followed by a big ‘go and sue’ campaign. Airports all over the EU are full of posters advising passengers of their rights.” The ruling came in the case of
Sturgeon v Condor involving a family flying from Frankfurt to Toronto who suffered a 24-hour
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