Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-02-17-Speech-4-231"
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"en.20000217.11.4-231"2
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"Mr President, I would first like to thank the rapporteur, Mr Viceconte and congratulate him on the report.
The European Community’s prime role is to ensure a framework which enables and encourages stakeholders and authorities at all levels to optimise and realise the tourism sector’s potential for growth and employment. Such a European strategy will be achieved through building on the commitment by Member States and the Commission to cooperate in a number of priority areas: exchange and dissemination of information, notably through new technologies; training in order to upgrade skills, quality of tourist products and sustainable development in tourism.
In the autumn the Commission will report back on the progress made in this respect. A report on the work to be undertaken, together with the Member States and the tourism industry should be available in about two years from now. Depending on the results of this work, a wider debate could then take place which might well be the starting-point for even more comprehensive policy initiatives.
Mr Medina Ortega asked me some very concrete questions. As regards the role of tourism policy in the communities concerned, we must understand that many policy sectors have a huge impact on the framework on tourism. It is not only the targeted, specific tourism actions which are important but the other horizontal actions in the field of transport. At the moment, the question of congestion of air and roads is the fundamental problem. In the area of environment, we are looking at ways to cooperate with Mrs Wallström; in the area of regional policy Mr Barnier is giving a lot of attention to this sector.
We need to have this streamlined approach on tourism which covers all the policies. I am sure that we will improve on that in the future when we have had a good high-level working group report, your support with your report here and also when the tourism sector is part of enterprise policy.
Why is it so important in that sector? It is because the key emphasis on the enterprise policy will be how to help to create new enterprises; how to make it easier for young people and women to create their own enterprises. That is where the potential is. If we can eliminate the obstacles to make it cheaper to create new enterprises, to facilitate the access to financing and to change the attitude of society to be more positive entrepreneurship, I am sure the tourism sector will be the first to benefit from this.
There is one problem that I hesitate to mention today as I am new in the sector. I have been working now in all industrial and service sectors, but when you look at the organisational structure in tourism it is almost impossible. It is very difficult for a Commissioner to try to work in an area where there are dozens of different organisations whose representativeness needs to be ascertained every time. To strengthen the role of tourism in Europe, the organisations should do what has happened in most economic sectors: seek better focus, better coordination and concentrated activities. Then we could have a solid dialogue in our everyday work. That is the real difficulty which we must overcome.
As far as the Treaty is concerned, the intergovernmental conference started this week so we do not know the results yet. I want to be very candid: I have not seen much enthusiasm about that conference or the proposal to enlarge the powers of the EU. Tourism is also in the list of subjects which do not figure as new areas of competence for the EU. We will see what happens but at the moment that seems to be the case.
Finally, the Commission welcomes the resolution which continues the line of the high-level group, the Commission communication on enhancing tourism’s potential for employment and the corresponding Council conclusions. The general agreement between both institutions in this field must not keep the Commission from following the most pragmatic approach in achieving our common objectives.
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I think we all acknowledge the economic, social and environmental importance of tourism in today’s developed Europe and its great potential for growth and employment. I am glad to see that the Commission and Parliament are converging towards the same goal in this area.
Employment issues are at present the core concern regarding tourism. An essential condition in order to make good progress in the work in this respect is that the cooperation with Member States and the industry and with other partners be as fruitful as possible. This will determine the success of our work. Certainly the Commission will seek good coordination with national employment policies. This will also be important with a view to the special summit in March, where tourism is bound to be mentioned as a significant contributor to employment.
Coordination of Community tourism activities with other important issues such as regional policies, transport, employment, environment, culture and competition must strongly involve Member States and the tourism industry itself. As far as specific policies are concerned, I would like to pinpoint just one on which the draft resolution focuses – regional policy. The Commission guideline document for the new structural fund’s programming period has already identified tourism as one of the areas with particular potential for employment creation through competitive enterprises. The Commission expects Member States to put increased emphasis on tourism measures in their plans and programming.
Quality, sustainability, innovation are at the forefront of the Commission’s own policy and are priorities recognised by the Council of Ministers. Quality products in order to improve competitiveness, sustainability in order to protect resources and innovation in particular through the use of information technologies.
Regarding sustainability indicators, the European Environment Agency is already working with the Commission on the issue. I want to mention, as has already been mentioned by many speakers today, that tourism related to the natural and cultural heritage is expected to be the fastest expanding form of tourism in the EU during the next two decades. These possibilities should be fully exploited.
Mr Provan said that I often talk a lot about tourism and information technology. I am personally convinced that information and communication technologies will be a key competitiveness and innovation factor for European tourism. The travel and tourism sector is the front-runner in making use of ICT tools. This will dramatically change the way it operates. Marketing, reservation and transport are expected to be the areas of profoundest change and improvement. Use of ICT opens a completely new dimension in the context of travel and tourism. Direct business to consumer contact will supplement, and sometimes also reduce, the currently, nearly exclusive business to business relationship. It will give more and better choice to tourists and generate new and better tourist products.
For the Commission this requires that action in the tourism field must be tightly linked to measures promoting the take-up of information communication technology by the tourism industry, in particular by the innovation and innovative society technological programmes which are both within my competence. The new strategy outlined by the Commission communication on tourism and employment, and agreed by the Council, places the emphases on tourism gathering and disseminating information and good practice.
The implementation of the directive on statistics aims at improving the knowledge of market structures and trends in European tourism and its industry. Commission decisions have advanced the methodological approach. The report on the experience acquired in the work carried out under this directive is part of our work programme for the current year. More work on the social and economic impact of tourism is currently on-going with the international organisations, such as the World Tourism Organisation."@en1
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