The need to enhance the understanding and visibility of tourism being a wide and multisectoral phenomenon, requires a strong cooperation with other organisations, public administrations, destinations, stakeholders, academic world, etc. The Commission is already collaborating with the different services. Given that at present the Community has no direct tourism competence, a number of areas in other European policies have a considerable and even growing impact on tourism.
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To provide a source of information and support on implementation of EU programmes at national and regional level the Commission Enterprise Europe Network (EEN) was set up. EEN is a network specifically designed for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) but also available to all businesses, research centres and Universities across Europe, made up of close to 600 partner organisations in more than 40 countries that offers support and advice to businesses across Europe.
Statistical support is one of the major tools needed for a better understanding of the tourism sector. The finalisation of a new Statistical Regulation in the field of tourism is in an advanced state and it is expected to enter in force in 2010. At the same time, the Commission, together with Member States and in collaboration with OECD and the World Tourism Organisation, is promoting the introduction of TSA (Tourism Satellite Account) in Member States. TSA is a statistical accounting framework in the field of tourism to measure the goods and services according to international standards of concepts, classifications and definitions, which allow valid comparisons from country to country in a consistent manner. A complete TSA contains detailed production accounts of the tourism industry and their linkages to other industries, employment, capital formation and additional non-monetary information on tourism.
Enhancing the visibility of European tourism is another of our main goals. To draw attention to the value, diversity and shared characteristics of European tourist destinations, and to promote destinations where the economic growth objective is pursued in such a way as to ensure the social, cultural and environmental sustainability of tourism, the European Commission is running the European Destinations of Excellence (EDEN) preparatory action. Some of the main aims of such a preparatory action are enhancing visibility of the emerging European tourist destinations of excellence, especially the lesser known, and creating awareness of Europe’s tourist diversity and quality.
The Commission also intends highlighting the richness and diversity of European tourism through its Calypso programme, which seeks to facilitate tourism exchanges in Europe.
Finally, again in the direction of cooperation with other actors of the tourism sector, and with the aim of strengthening European tourism, the Commission proposed an operational framework through the organisation of a number of events. Such events are deemed important in order to improve the interface between European tourism stakeholders. One of the measures provided are an annual European Tourism Forum, which normally brings together more than 300 leading representatives from the tourism industry, civil society, European Institutions, national and regional authorities dealing with tourism, and international organisations to discuss the challenges of the sector. Every year the Forum focuses on specific themes of interest.
Source: European Commission
