Complaints and claims across borders: which body, which court, which route

The Commission publishes one list of national enforcement bodies per regulation (linked under Sources, with the dates they were last updated). Each Member State is responsible for the accuracy of its own entry, so check the entry against the body’s own website before you write to it. We do not copy the lists, because they change and differ in date.

For claims under the Montreal Convention (baggage, delay, and injury on international flights), you can bring the action, at your option, in any State Party either before the court of the carrier’s domicile or principal place of business, where the carrier has a place of business through which the contract was made, or at the place of destination. For death or injury of a passenger there is one further option: the State where the passenger had their principal and permanent residence at the time of the accident, if the carrier operates passenger services there. Procedure is governed by the law of the court.

Where you flew with more than one carrier on the same ticket, the Convention’s rules on successive carriage apply. For passengers, an action lies only against the carrier that performed the part of the journey in which the accident or delay happened, unless the first carrier expressly took responsibility for the whole journey. For baggage you can sue the first carrier, and the person entitled to delivery can sue the last; either can also sue the carrier that performed the part in which the loss, damage or delay occurred.

• European Consumer Centres (ECC-Net): they help settle a dispute with a trader based in another EU country (or Iceland or Norway).
• Alternative dispute resolution (ADR): settling a complaint out of court with an impartial body. Where a trader has committed to, or is obliged to use, an ADR body, it must tell you which one, and after a failed complaint it must state whether it will use ADR. The Commission keeps a list of ADR bodies.
• European Small Claims Procedure: for cross-border civil and commercial claims of up to 5,000 euros, excluding interest, expenses and disbursements. The original limit was 2,000 euros.

The EU’s online dispute resolution platform no longer exists: complaints could no longer be submitted after 20 March 2025, and the regulation that set it up is repealed from 20 July 2025. Old links to it will not work.

Under the Package Travel Directive (2015/2302) the organiser is responsible for the performance of all the travel services in the package, whoever performs them, and you must tell the organiser without undue delay about anything that is not as agreed. You are entitled to a price reduction for the period of non-conformity and to compensation for damage, unless the organiser proves that you caused it, that an unconnected third party caused it in an unforeseeable or unavoidable way, or that it was due to unavoidable and extraordinary circumstances. The limitation period may not be shorter than two years.

The Directive does not replace the transport regulations. You may claim under both, and what you receive under one is deducted from the other so that you are not compensated twice. Organisers must also protect your money and, where transport is included, your repatriation if they become insolvent, regardless of where you live, where the trip starts or where the package was sold.

A combination counts as a package where, for the same trip, at least two different types of travel service are combined by one trader before a single contract is concluded, or are bought from a single point of sale and chosen before you agree to pay, or are sold at an inclusive price or advertised as a package. Separate contracts arranged with a trader’s help can instead be a ‘linked travel arrangement’, which carries less protection.

The UK Civil Aviation Authority describes itself as the enforcement body in the UK for some of the consumer law that applies to air travel. For an unresolved airline complaint, the CAA points to two approved alternative dispute resolution providers, AviationADR and the Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution (CEDR), and states that most UK airlines and airports are signed up to one of them. For rail in Great Britain, see the train guide for the Rail Ombudsman.