Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-09-07-Speech-3-206"
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"en.20050907.19.3-206"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I will take away from this debate a great many very important ideas and, above all, the impression of broad agreement on your part that tourism represents a dynamo for growth for Europe’s future, and must be given a higher profile in European policy as a whole.
For this reason, it has already been agreed that a European Tourism Forum is to be held in Malta in October, where I shall be unveiling the key elements of the Commission’s future tourism policy. In addition, as I have already told your Committee, there are plans to present, early next year, a fundamental review of EU tourism policy to date in the form of a new strategy. I shall gladly incorporate into this all the ideas – and there have been very, very many of them – that I have been able to draw from today’s debate.
I should just like to make one very clear qualification, which is that I am unable to raise the hopes of those speakers who, this afternoon, have called for protectionism, interventionism or subsidies. The Commission’s ideas will be far removed from any form of State intervention, State protection or, particularly, of subsidy. We shall most definitely not be launching a new subsidised sector, but instead shall create framework conditions using all the instruments we have for supporting the framework conditions for an economic sector.
I should like to state equally clearly that I shall never accept the assertion that it is the Commission’s job to set up a ‘tourism and the elderly’ programme. If the tourism industry believes it should be doing something special for the elderly, then it should be so good as to do that itself; the Commission, at any rate, will not. We can propose it, but we shall not take upon ourselves those things that the tourism industry should be doing. Instead, we shall ensure that the tourism industry enjoys conditions conducive to development. It is for people themselves to run their own businesses; that is a function we shall most certainly not be taking from them.
I think that we shall come to agree on this principle, and also, most certainly, on the principle that we do not wish to take the retrograde step of calling for more and more European rules, standards and regulations. I really was rather astonished this afternoon to hear the call for large numbers of new European rules, and my answer to this is an unambiguous ‘no’. For the Commission’s part, at least, there will be no European standards for hotels, inns or coaches. The last thing the Commission needs is to have to take on thousands of testers and send them to Europe’s restaurants to determine whether certain minimum standards of quality stipulated by the Commission ...
Yes, you did say that, and my reply is a clear ‘no’. Let the tourism industry agree on its own quality requirements. Where safety is concerned, however, it is a different matter; the appropriate arrangements are in place for this, but arranging and imposing quality standards in certain economic sectors is a matter for the sector itself rather than for the public legislator. I would also ask that Parliament finally show some consistency on this, and not criticise the Commission for excessive interference in economic matters, whilst at the same time repeatedly demanding that we take the industry’s tasks upon ourselves.
This difference of opinion notwithstanding, though, I think that this debate has revealed a good deal of common ground, and I am quite sure that we shall succeed in arriving at a forward-looking common policy on tourism."@en1
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