Tourism MEPs: trust in travelling remains low, SMEs are suffering
Tuesday, 14 July 2020
tourism
presentations
competitiveness_market_and_economy
Members of Parliament's Tourism Task Force request additional urgent measures to relaunch tourism in Europe and help businesses to survive the COVID-19 crisis. The Transport and Tourism Committee discussed on Tuesday, with European Commission Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs Director-General Kerstin Jorna, the tourism aspects of the EU Recovery Package and next long-term EU budget. The MEPs also reiterated their request for further action to support the sector, which is facing bankruptcies and massive layoffs. (Catch up with the debate here). The Tourism Task Force took stock of the progress made by different actors to help the sector to overcome the crisis one month after the Parliament adopted its resolution on transport and tourism: "As we enter the peak of the tourist season, confidence and trust in travel have not been re-established, as shown by the shortfall in tourist numbers. Despite the sector's efforts to re-open activities in a safe way as well as the initiatives from the European Commission such as the Re-open EU web platform, much more is needed to restore this confidence. As soon as possible, Europe needs:
- a common threshold of what would be considered an acceptably low level of virus propagation, which would then have to be enforced across all EU member states;
- common hygiene and sanitary measures for various modes of transport within the European Union, instead of different protocols at each airport or port;
- a more objective and transparent process of opening the borders to third-country nationals, based on epidemiological evidence; the current recommendation that lists 15 third countries whose nationals can enter the EU is confusing for travellers, especially to those in transit.