Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-11-28-Speech-3-221"
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"en.20071128.22.3-221"2
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Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, the report I am presenting, and that I had the pleasure of putting together with the cooperation of a number of colleagues, in fact follows on from a report already adopted by this House – the one by Mr Queiró – through which Parliament sought to make a contribution to European tourism policy.
The intention behind this report is therefore to encourage the Commission and the Council to envisage a set of initiatives belonging formally to other fields of competence – I repeat, consumer protection, transport safety, guarantees for certain tourism-related contracts, immigration policy, coordinated promotion campaigns beyond Europe’s borders, and so on – to put together a set of initiatives, a package of tourism initiatives. I firmly believe that these could constitute a real contribution by the European institutions to preserving and developing a sector that, as we all know, plays a major part and will play an ever greater part in the future of the European Union.
The inspiration behind this report is the need to devise a different, and I hope more practical, approach to European Union policy on tourism, which is currently restricted by the provisions of the Treaty.
The Member States have not conferred much responsibility for tourism on the European institutions under the existing Treaty, and I must say that not even the treaty we are about to approve - and which I hope the Union will adopt next month in Lisbon - will increase the EU’s formal powers over tourism to any great extent.
At the same time, however, the existing Treaties do enable the Union to implement a large number of policies which have a considerable impact on tourism and on the possibility of increasing it or maintaining Europe’s competitiveness as a world leader.
The purpose of this report, therefore, is to set out various possibilities. The list drawn up by us in this House, with everyone’s assistance, is merely an indicative list, which I hope can be further expanded. It is a list of opportunities for using the EU’s full range of existing powers to benefit tourism.
Let me give just two examples: the tourist is a traveller, so by definition many of our transport policies can be seen, or re-read, in terms of and in favour of tourism; the tourist is a consumer, so many of the EU’s consumer protection measures can be re-read in terms of tourist requirements.
More broadly, however, tourists – especially those arriving in Europe from third countries – are people who cross borders, just as other people cross borders for various reasons. The European Union’s visa policy, its immigration policy, should be carefully revised in order to be able to attract the maximum possible number of tourists.
Many of the contracts signed by tourists nowadays are concluded directly, using web-based technology, and do not afford them full protection. The EU can thus do a lot for tourists by protecting such contracts or introducing types of contracts which do afford protection. I will spare you the details.
In sum, we all acknowledge that tourism is one of Europe’s most promising industries, and I think we can say that – above all for reasons of cohesion – it is worth standing by our main aim of developing the tourist economy; this means making the most of resources such as cultural and environmental resources, which can be done by utilising the Union’s formal powers to the full."@en1
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