A4-0080/94

Resolution on the report from the Commission on Community measures affecting tourism

The European Parliament,

-having regard to the Commission report on Community measures affecting tourism (COM(94)0074 - C3-0202/94),

-having regard to Articles 3(t) and 3b of the EC Treaty and the Declaration on Civil Protection, Energy and Tourism annexed to the Final Act of the Treaty on European Union,

-having regard to the Declaration on the outermost regions annexed to the Final Act of the Treaty on European Union,

-having regard to its resolutions of 13 July 1990 on the measures needed to protect the environment from potential damage caused by mass tourism, as part of the European Year of Tourism, 13 December 1990 on the European Year of Tourism, 11 June 1991 on a Community tourism policy, 12 June 1991 on the danger to natural and semi-natural habitats in the Alps (EC and EFTA countries) posed by the steady increase in summer and winter tourism in these areas, 14 February 1992 on a Community action plan to assist tourism, 17 November 1992 on the Commission proposal to the Council for a resolution on a Community programme of policy and action in relation to the environment and sustainable development and 18 January 1994 on tourism in the approach to the year 2000,

-having regard to the applicable provisions of the Rules of Procedure,

-having regard to the report of the Committee on Transport and Tourism and the opinions of the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development, the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs and Industrial Policy, the Committee on Research, Technological Development and Energy, the Committee on External Economic Relations, the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Consumer Protection and the Committee on Culture, Youth, Education and the Media (A4-0080/94),

A.whereas the EU Treaty does not include a specific chapter on tourism, one of the prime Community sectors in professional, social, employment, economic and environmental terms,

B.surprised, therefore, that tourism, which concerns all the people of Europe, has so far and with few exceptions been analysed only from an economic point of view,

C.firmly believing that tourism can increasingly make a substantial contribution to the key concept of European citizenship,

D.whereas primary responsibility for tourism policy lies with the regions and the Member States, but coordinating and supporting Community initiatives in various areas are also required on the part of the European Union,

E.whereas, therefore, the forthcoming revision of the Treaty on European Union cannot postpone consolidation of a Community policy on tourism and whereas this must be embraced wholeheartedly,

F.whereas, therefore, its abovementioned resolutions of 13 July 1990, 11 June 1991 and 18 January 1994 form part of the acquis communautaire with regard to tourism,

G.whereas European research and technological development programmes will help the tourist industry to harness the opportunities arising from the "information society" and from environmental considerations,

H.whereas any Community initiative in the tourism sector must strive for the highest levels of quality and well-being, both for tourists and for the people who live in tourist areas; whereas this must be achieved through the setting of ambitious social, employment, economic, consumer protection, public health, cultural and environmental objectives; whereas the forthcoming Green Paper on tourism must establish such objectives unequivocally,

I.whereas within mass tourism a distorted picture often emerges of the culture of regions visited; whereas one of the aims of tourism ought to be to become acquainted with genuine culture,

J.whereas, for the information of tourists, a Community tourism quality label should be introduced for tourist centres, travel agencies, hotel and accommodation businesses and also local authorities, provided that they practise environmentally sound tourism and achieve the abovementioned objectives; whereas for this reason data-networking concerning existing environmentally oriented tourism projects for the information of tour operators, the catering trade and towns, local authorities and regions should be promoted,

K.whereas SMEs are the biggest growth sector for jobs, and are very well represented in the tourism industry,

L.whereas tourism is a vehicle for peace, solidarity and social cohesion,

M.whereas the establishment of the European Investment Fund administered by the European Investment Bank will promote the strengthening of trans-European networks and finance small businesses in the tourism sector, insofar as they respect the environment,

N.whereas the European tourism sector is highly diverse, ranging from the north to the south, from city to rural areas; whereas all Europe's citizens, rich and poor, are potential beneficiaries,

1.Maintains that tourism is not just one of the European Union's most important industries but, in addition and above all, is something which concerns all the people of Europe, for whom it represents an irreversible social triumph of which ever-greater quality is demanded;

2.Stresses the logic, therefore, of making tourists the focal point of a Community tourism policy, not just as mere quantifiable statistics but as consumers and citizens of the Union with both rights and obligations;

3.Calls therefore for the aspects of transport safety and health to be key aspects in the development of any tourism policy;

4.Calls for the forthcoming revision of the Treaty on European Union in 1996, whilst abiding by the principle of subsidiarity, to include a special title on tourism containing a specific, multidisciplinary and multidimensional European tourism policy which incorporates and coordinates environmental, economic, social, employment and cultural criteria in its planning; instructs its Committee on Institutional Affairs to take due note of this request;

5.Takes the view that tourism policy must be geared towards sustainable forms of tourism which enable local traditions and the culture of the host regions to be better appreciated and respected;

6.Considers that tourism, an important factor in Community development, job creation and competitiveness, must be sustainable, and it is therefore essential for tourism initiatives to be coordinated with other Community policies, for local, regional, national and international authorities to exercise their responsibility and for NGOs to be able to be actively involved;

7.Believes tourism and the environment to be inextricably linked and therefore calls for close coordination between the two policies pursuant to Article 130r(2) of the EC Treaty, since tourism depends, more than any other sector, on the quality of the environment, especially in the case of the smaller islands of the Community, in respect of which pilot schemes should be devised to show that sustainable tourist development would be possible;

8.Calls for an environmental impact assessment to be carried out in respect of any coastal or mountain tourist development project, as stipulated in the resolution on the Fifth Action Programme entitled 'Towards Sustainable Development' and in the amendment to Directive 85/337/EEC;

9.Recalls the request made in its above-mentioned resolution of 14 February 1992 relating to the implementation of preventive campaigns on tourism and the environment and the application of the 'polluter pays' principle, and also repeats the call made in its above-mentioned resolution of 17 November 1992 for application of the principle whereby those who consume natural resources should also be required to pay;

10.Calls for all tourism development projects to take account of the triple concept of 'tourism, environment and health';

11.Underscores the importance to the tourist industry of numerous ongoing European research projects, particularly in information and communication technologies, the environment and transport;

12.Calls for a European Tourism Agency to be set up which, in cooperation with the European Environment Agency, could help to establish the priorities for a Community policy on environmentally responsible tourism, assess the capacity of certain saturated coastal areas or of over-exploited resources such as water, and at the same time monitor compliance with the required quality standards;

13.Calls on the Commission to promote a tourism policy within international bodies, particularly the World Tourism Organization, and to incorporate the objectives of the Community tourism policy into all cooperation agreements with third countries;

14.Seeks to support Europe as a destination for incentive tourism, particularly through the promotion of conferences;

15.Takes the view that assistance should be provided as a matter of urgency for a public campaign to combat sex tourism to third countries, as Parliament has been requesting;

16.Considers that tourists' rights and obligations deriving from Union and national provisions should be compiled in an easy-to-understand form and should form part of all information and distribution campaigns undertaken by agencies, wholesalers and operators, particular attention being paid to a code of conduct for tourists in the host country;

17.Instructs, therefore, its Committee on Transport and Tourism to draw up a European Tourist's Charter for adoption at a subsequent Council of Ministers meeting on the subject;

18.Calls for at least one meeting of the Council of tourism ministers to be held under each presidency and deplores the fact, therefore, that the current German presidency has not agreed to the request from the Committee on Transport and Tourism for such a meeting to be held during the second half of 1994;

19.Calls for greater development of, and assistance to, other forms of tourism (urban, cultural, rural, eco-tourism), which in many cases are complementary to tourism in the strict, limited sense of 'sun, sea and sand', and repeats the call made in its above-mentioned resolution of 12 June 1991 for large areas of the Alps to be closed to tourism;

20.Calls on the Member States to take the necessary steps to ensure that, before a special operating licence is granted, checks are carried out into the solvency, reliability and previous business activity of the agency and/or those responsible for running it;

21.Calls on the Member States to take the necessary steps to ensure that tourist agencies bear responsibility vis-ŕ-vis hoteliers with regard to fulfilling the commitments resulting from the agreement between them and that they provide guarantees in the event of insolvency or bankruptcy;

22.Calls for special attention to be paid to certain regions of the EU in which there is a high concentration in quantative and qualitative terms of spas and spa reports and for a suitable increase in funding for this sector;

23.Calls upon the Commission to promote policies to help SMEs in the tourism sector, provided they are sustainable;

24.Calls for the EIB, through the EIF, to acknowledge the opportunities to fulfil its mandate in developing the European economy by action within the tourism sector;

25.Lays great emphasis on the considerable significance of rural tourism for the economic development of rural areas and for safeguarding the basis of the livelihood of many farming families;

26.Takes the view that rural tourism as an alternative which is close to nature to geographically concentrated mass tourism is particularly deserving of assistance and therefore advocates that the relevant aid be stepped up;

27.Calls on the Member States to hasten the removal of administrative and legal obstacles to the further development of tourism in rural areas;

28.Considers that the development of appropriate organizational structures to improve the marketing of agricultural and rural tourism must be further promoted with a view to fully exploiting the potential demand;

29.Favours the establishment of an EU-wide network of service providers in the field of rural tourism with a view to creating greater transparency in the European rural tourism industry and considers that such a network should be supported from EU funds;

30.Expects the Commission to use the forthcoming Green Paper to articulate the EU's long-term research policy options for tourism;

31.Requests the Commission to approve promptly, and implement as soon as possible, the regional development plans submitted by the Member States in connection with structural policy, in which rural tourism plays an important role;

32.Supports the widening of measures to promote regional markets for the integration of rural tourism and the preparation of special regional products;

33.Congratulates the Commission on the forthcoming publication of the Green Paper on tourism before the end of 1994 and calls for the firm establishment therein of the priorities for a future European tourism policy; for this reason maintains that it is essential for a specific title on tourism to be included in the revision of the Treaty on European Union in 1996; this must be the essential concern of the Green Paper in question, along with the basic substance of this resolution;

34.Believes that the Green Paper should also recommend that:

-excessive tourist provision should be avoided, and even that, in certain coastal and mountain areas, provision should be reduced, not just to protect the environment and natural resources but also to avoid devaluing the quality of the provision, by shifting demand towards other regions which have promoted alternative types of tourism, in particular 'soft' and non-aggressive tourism;

-a basis should be established for regulating the growth in water-based tourism which, because it is unregulated, is doing increasing damage to the environment and the seabed, and is also a serious hazard to the physical safety of bathers, partly because of the proliferation of increasingly uncontrollable seacraft such as water 'scooters', which are a frequent cause of sometimes fatal accidents;

-the incompatibility between mass tourism and the fragile eco-systems of small islands should be analysed in specific terms, and it should make it clear that only 'soft' tourism is compatible with the concept of sustainable development referred to in Article 2 of the EC Treaty;

-the introduction of a European tourism label should be encouraged, similar to the 'eco-label' or the 'Grüner Koffer', which would be a distinguishing sign and serve as guidance to tourists regarding tourist centres, travel agencies and hotels which developed and promoted tourism which was compatible with the natural and social environment and with natural resources;

-the principle of municipal environmental auditing should be established pursuant to Regulation (EEC) No. 1836/93 on environmental auditing and based, for example, on the following: waste; consumption of water, energy and resources; water pollution (drinking water, bathing water, surface water and underground water); pollution caused by waste water, recycling and re-use; traffic, noise and air pollution; land use, zoning and planning, protection of sensitive areas, biotopes, forests, soils, agriculture, etc.;

-support be given for data collection and networking concerning existing environmentally compatible tourism projects so that a Europe-wide information network for the regions, local authorities and cities and for the hotel and catering trade and tour operators is expanded and made more accessible;

35.Believes further that the Green Paper should pay considerable attention to schemes for 'soft mobility' in the area of tourism, such as, for example, support and encouragement for -car-free towns and islands,

-regions wishing to step up public transport and bicycle use during holiday periods and at weekends, -measures to make it easier to take bicycles on European trains, -improving booking systems for European trains,

-advertising for 'soft mobility';

36.Considers that the Green Paper should also encourage concentration in the public health field, where policies will rightly impinge on Europe's tourism sector by harmonization of anti-drink/drive programmes, supporting the European Against Aids programme, and the establishment of an emergency health card usable throughout the Union;

37.Considers that amongst the priorities in the Green Paper, particular attention, in the form of specific measures and initiatives, should be given to tourists who are disabled in any way and ease of mobility for the elderly should be ensured so as to make all tourist services and infrastructures (and, naturally, transport facilities) readily accessible;

38.Also calls for the Green Paper to include a general framework of balanced rules governing relations between operators and businesses providing accommodation; within this framework measures should be taken to ensure, with full observance of the rights of all the parties concerned, that the harm which may be caused to tourists by the practice of overbooking is rectified; a system of joint control should also be established to guarantee a uniform standard of service in one and the same category of accommodation;

39.Urges the Commission to study the possibility of submitting a proposal for a directive regulating the system of compensation for overbooking within the tourism sector as is the case with air transport;

40.Insists that the benefits of liberalization of air transport be passed on to travellers, in particular the relaxation of capacity-sharing and market access rules for scheduled airlines, enabling them to compete on a more equal footing with charters;

41.Calls, furthermore, for the Green Paper to include specific measures to promote youth tourism and to encourage social tourism and for it to devote particular attention to cooperation between cities in order to encourage urban tourism, with due regard to the particular environmental characteristics thereof;

42.Also calls for particular attention to be devoted to problems relating to island tourism, which is not readily compatible with mass tourism, through the development of projects to reduce and control tourism in order to improve services, the environment and the protection of scarce natural resources;

43.Calls for particular attention to be devoted to promoting and managing tourism in Europe's historic cities, including support for new networking organizations;

44.Proposes specifically to the Commission that it should devise an initiative to promote tourism in the Community's outermost regions;

45.Calls for encouragement to be given to finally setting up a single European airspace control system managed by a single Community civil aviation authority with executive powers and powers to issue rules binding on all control centres in the Community countries; in the meantime, the Member States should be called on as a matter of urgency to provide control centres with sufficient human and technical resources to meet traffic demand without restrictions;

46.Urges the European Union to continue to act in third countries to promote tourism by joint, coordinated means, using leaflets of similar design which emphasize, inter alia, the outstanding multicultural diversity of Europe;

47.Reaffirms the importance of urgently promoting the development, the substance and the approval of tourism training courses within the Union in view of the very high degree of job mobility within this sector, paying special attention to the uncertainty surrounding legislation on and wages of seasonal extra-Community workers, who are frequently subject to intolerable exploitation;

48.Repeats the call made in its resolutions of 12 June 1991 and 18 January 1994 for the standardization and reimbursement of all medical expenses incurred by tourists in the various Member States;

49.Calls for international health cover arrangements for tourists in Community countries which are not their countries of residence to be strengthened and made more flexible;

50.Stresses, furthermore, the social and economic value of promoting day excursions and short stays, such as weekend breaks, which can help to compensate for the seasonal nature of certain forms of tourism;

51.Calls on the Commission to allocate greater resources to DG XXIII, in terms of both funding and permanent staff, so that it can respond appropriately to the importance of tourism from the economic, social, employment and environmental points of view and especially by gathering statistics on tourism which will help to establish appropriate policies;

52.Calls on the Commission and the Council to promote the European Union as a global destination for tourists as is done with America, the Far East and Africa;

53.Also calls for the Community budget to reflect this boost to tourism which has come about following the completion of the internal market;

54.Calls for the present rules on VAT on package tours to be harmonized at Community level;

55.Calls for the formulation of programmes to modernize obsolete hotel stock and make it more 'environment-friendly' and for sufficient funds to be earmarked for this purpose;

56.Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Commission, the Council, the Committee of the Regions, the governments and parliaments of the Member States, the European Travel Commission, the World Travel and Tourism Council, the International Congress Bureau and the World Tourism Organization.