Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-09-07-Speech-3-176"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20050907.19.3-176"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:translated text |
".
Mr President, Commissioner Verheugen, ladies and gentlemen, I have no intention of telling you my life story, but as an example of what we are debating here today, I will tell you that during the last decade, that is to say, during the nineties, I administered a metropolitan city of one million inhabitants which was experiencing a great depression and undergoing industrial restructuring.
As Mayor and President of the Municipal Corporation of the City of Bilbao, I placed a lot of faith in the theories of a respected professor of marketing, Philip Kotler. He is the author of several publications, of which my favourite is entitled
. In it, Kotler says that a country, region or city that wants to offer its citizens opportunities for progress and well-being must pursue three equally important great objectives, namely to sell the goods it produces to the outside, to attract investments and to attract tourism. Tourism is understood to mean not just leisure tourism, but also business, educational, scientific, sporting, and cultural tourism, for example.
Today, my city has famously increased its income
as a result of the considerable increase in tourism resulting from its urban transformation. Bilbao has become a centre for services, trade, business and culture within its industrial hinterland.
There is no need to remind you of the important contribution of tourism, which provides 4% of the European Union’s GDP, nor of the seven million direct jobs generated by more than two million companies, the vast majority of which are small or medium-sized businesses.
I would therefore like to say to you that I openly reiterate my support for the proposal to create an adequate budget line within the Union’s budget to support the tourism sector, as well as the other requests or amendments introduced into the original text by the Committee on Transport and Tourism. I have in mind the reduced rate of VAT for restaurants, improving the professional training of workers, the introduction of a European classification of tourist services and strengthening the rights of tourists and their protection as consumers.
But there is one aspect included in the wonderful report by Mr Luis Queiró that I would like to stress. I am referring to transport as a necessary support to guarantee the mobility and the journeys of the millions of citizens who make up the base of tourism. In particular I would like to draw attention to the trans-European road transport networks. Every summer or holiday period these become jammed with kilometres of tail-backs of thousands of lorries and cars that have to stop repeatedly because of the excessive number of motorway toll points along a particular route.
We frequently experience one example of this inefficiency at the Viriatu pass between Spain and France, where there are five toll stations within a stretch of 50 kilometres."@en1
|
| lpv:unclassifiedMetadata |
"The Marketing of Nations"1
|
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples