Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, today we are addressing a very important sector that directly involves over 10 million jobs in the European Union and helps the more or less disadvantaged, island and remote areas to stand on their own feet. And of course, tourism creates more jobs and contributes to the stimulation of employment, especially among society’s more sensitive sections: women and young people. In view of all this, I think it is a serious contradiction that there is no European policy on tourism. The lack of any legal base makes it impossible to adopt measures relating to the sector. The occasional application of Article 308 – formerly Article 235 – which requires unanimity, has prevented the adoption of a programme even of only EUR 8 million for five years and 15 Member States. The measures taken from time to time in the past have been fragmentary and therefore ineffective, and such provisions as have been made were dictated by parallel policies such as consumer protection, environmental policy, transport policy, taxation policy, etc., which very often are not only no help to tourism but on the contrary make it more difficult, since their introduction has usually entailed costs for the tourism industry without regard to its ability to bear them or its incentives to cope with them. With sorrow, I stress that in the context of restructuring the Commission’s services, tourism is dealt with by a section, not even a directorate, within the Directorate-General for ‘Enterprise’. But we must support our tourism! In our view, the axes which could create a basis for its support are: the addition of material capital for tourism in the new review which will also constitute a legal base for the sector, the framing of a Community tourism policy to support the sector without disturbing the operation of the tourism market, coordination of the tourism policy with other, parallel Community policies which affect it directly or indirectly, a study of the sector, and the adoption of medium and long-term measures to enhance the competitiveness of tourism as a product. Mr President, Commissioner, since the issue of employment has been raised, I want to recall another issue which is also very serious, namely the bankruptcies among Tour Operators and their consequences mainly for hotels, which are small or medium enterprises lacking the necessary organisation and access to information that would indicate to them whether or not their contractual partners are trustworthy. Clearly it is impossible to adopt measures at the national level. In contrast, at European level it would be possible to look into measures for improving the relations between hotels and Tour Operators, for example a regulation of such relations, the promotion of a special bankruptcy fund, etc., in collaboration with representatives from the two branches. In the past, the Commission had requested quantitative records of the losses incurred by companies because of such bankruptcies, so that it could form an opinion, and asked the European confederations of hotel-and-restaurant owners and tourist agencies, HOTREC and ECTAA, to work out and draw up a regulation to govern the relations between them. Since then, however, there has been no progress. There must therefore be measures to improve the quality and competitiveness of Europe’s tourism and, to the extent of the possible, safeguard the operation of companies. Such measures must also aim to promote rational use of natural and cultural assets and of the tourism infrastructure, so contributing to the balanced and sustainable development of tourism. I will end by congratulating Mr Viceconte and, as one who comes from Crete, a tourist area, I ask that we should always view tourism not only in terms of pleasant holidays but as a primary job creator in a Europe which needs those jobs.

Political group: PSE