EU COMPETITION LAW AND POLICY IN THE TOURISM SECTOR 27 A more detailed overview of the impact of COVID-19 on the tourism sector can be found in the text and presentation of the author on the subject in the context of the international web conference organised by Professor Carlos Torres5 in April 2020. With a record of 1.4 billion international arrivals in 2018, global tourism grew around 4% in the first semester of 20196. Steadily expanding over the decades, the industry has achieved a 56 fold increase since 19507 and shows no sign of stopping8. In a fierce global competition, the EU takes the lead and collects 33% of global tourism receipts9. At the same time, the sum of direct and indirect contributions from the sector reaches 10.3% of the EU GDP, and the full-spectrum of tourismrelated activities employs around 27 million Europeans10. Hence, unsurprisingly, tourism has attracted considerable attention of the EU policy-makers since the early days of the Union11. Even the French satirical newspaper “Canard enchainé” published a Special on tourism in summer 201912. “Tourism” first appeared in the EU primary legislation in 1992, when the Treaty of Maastricht introduced it as a measure, subsidiary to the Member States’ policies13. The EU institutions have come up with various initiatives to 5 Bertold Bär-Bouyssière, The Impact of COVID-19 on Competition Law and Policy in the Tourism Sector, http:// intranet.eshte.pt/LegalImpactsCoronavirus11/. 6 UNWTO, International tourism up 4% in first half of 2019, World Tourism Organization reports, 09.09.2019, available at: http://www2.unwto.org/press-release/2019-09-09/international-tourism-4-first-half-2019-world-tourism -organization-reports. 7 Max Roser, Tourism, available at: https://ourworldindata.org/tourism. 8 UNWTO, International tourism continues to outpace the global economy,, available at: https://www.e-unwto. org/doi/pdf/10.18111/9789284421152. 9 According to UNWTO, with 710 million tourists spending circa EUR 483 billion, Europe remains the most visited region; Numbers for the EU-28: 562.9 million visitors in 2018, spending circa EUR 407 billion. See, UNTWO, supra note 8, p. 17. 10 European Parliament, Fact Sheets on the European Union – Tourism, available at: https://www.europarl. europa.eu/factsheets/en/sheet/126/tourism. 11 Tourism (in the context of regional policy) was discussed already in the First General Report on the Activities of the Communities in 1967, available at: https://publications.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/ efe33680-e3c7-4f53-8de7-98733c6965a2; “Article 2 of the Treaty of Rome assigns to the European Community the task of promoting closer relations between the States which belong to it. Tourism can assist the Community to achieve this goal and, by cringing the peoples of Europe into contact, it buttresses the edifice of European integration” – asserted the 1982 Communication of the Commission on Community Tourism policy. 12 Les dossiers du Canard n° 152: “1,4 milliard de touristes! et moi, et moi, et moi …” (July 2019). 13 Article 3 of the Treaty of Maastricht.
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