Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-05-13-Speech-2-297"
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"en.20030513.14.2-297"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, what I am going to say is not directed at you personally, but, as you are representing the Commission, I trust that you will relay our discussions to your fellow Commissioner, Mr Liikanen. The fact is that I found your answer rather soothing.
I believe that, as a result of the war in Iraq and of the outbreak of SARS in Asia, tourism in Europe and tourist travel to Europe have – as we say on the German coast – heavy weather to contend with, as does foreign tourism outside Europe. Air travel alone has seen passenger numbers decline, with a drop of 10% on flights to the Middle East and as much as 25% and more for flights to Asia. The airlines and tourism enterprises are doing their best to get the situation under control, but they need support from the Member States and from the EU. There are, alas, no indications so far as to how the European Union and the Member States propose to develop a joint strategy to alleviate this crisis and bring it to an end.
So my first question to the Commissioner is to ask whether she is willing to appoint, on an ad hoc basis, a high-level working party, which would involve the tourist industry and whose purpose would be to develop a strategy to reduce the tourist industry’s costs and to stimulate international tourism? Secondly, Commissioner, and quite apart from the present crisis, the Commission must, I believe, examine the fundamental aspects underlying tourism and give primary and close attention to the competitive situation in the Member States. After all, it cannot be right, in a European single market, that the Member States should levy VAT at different rates on similar tourist activities. That distorts the competition among them.
You will know – and have yourself emphasised the fact – that the tourist industry merits our particular attention precisely because it is in the hands of the same small and medium-sized enterprises that create jobs and training opportunities over wide areas of the European Union.
In conclusion, I want to repeat something that has been said by all the previous speakers, which is that support measures for tourism require legal certainty and legal clarity, and, for that reason, tourism must become a task in its own right in the constitution, with clear powers to act laid down for it. Commissioner, I admit that we too have problems with our representatives in the Convention, but the Commission, too, has two representatives there, and so I ask you whether the Commission’s two representatives have made an unambiguous request for tourism to be incorporated into the new constitution as a task involving powers to act."@en1
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