HOTREC welcomes the EP strategy for Sustainable Tourism
On 28 October 2020, MEP Cláudia Monteiro de Aguiar (Portugal, EPP) presented her initiative report on “Establishing an EU Strategy for Sustainable Tourism”.
We fully agree with the report and with the call on Member States to apply, without delay, common criteria for travel – including tracking forms and tests on departure – to avoid quarantine periods. Without these measures, travel will be disrupted and travellers will not have enough confidence to travel.
With regard to financing, we agree that the EU lost an opportunity to include direct financing to the tourism industry via the NextGenerationEU and can now only encourage Member States to include the industry in their recovery plans and in the REACT-EU initiative. We also very much support the possibility for the Commission to create a European mechanism to monitor the provision of support to micro, small and medium-sized enterprises – focusing on liquidity, lending and transparency. A ‘crisis-management mechanism for tourism’ preparatory action with a view to being ready to cope with future crises would also be much welcome.
Of course, we hope that the European Data Strategy will incorporate tourism in the governance framework for common data spaces, enabling businesses to fully commit to innovation and digitalisation. We believe this is essential for SMEs and micro-enterprises to access to intelligent data analysis.
Our only doubt concerns the proposal for the Commission to issue an EU hygiene certification seal as a European health security mark. HOTREC defends that all companies need to strictly follow their respective national health and safety protocols: more labels might be confusing to costumers and difficult to implement by the companies.
All in all, HOTREC very much welcomes the report and wishes to continue to be part of the EU dialogue aiming at creating an EU Strategy on Sustainable Tourism.
