Legal protection is nice, but it can be circumvented, like the Lufthansa fiasco showed: https://svedic.org/travel/screwed-by-lufthansa-german-govern...

Since then, I always try to book plane tickets with PayPal. It is a bit ironic that as an EU citizen, I was screwed by EU company (Lufthansa), EU politicians (German government), but saved by a private US company (PayPal) :D