The World Tourism Organisation estimates that the number of arrivals in Europe will double from 360 to 720 million by 2020. Unless a common, sustainable tourism policy is put in place without further delay, this trend will impact negatively on Europe's environment and population and will, in the medium term, constitute a risk even to Europe's tourism destinations.

Even now, the percentage share of tourism and leisure transport and traffic in Europe's overall traffic volume is approximately 50%. The intolerable traffic congestion during the past holiday season have once again demonstrated the urgent need for a common European tourism strategy. Apart from the fact that popular tourism destinations along the coasts or in the Alps are choked with traffic, people living along Europe's traffic arteries suffer from the noxious emissions from motor vehicles. More than 60% of tourists drive to their destinations in their own cars. The percentage share of rail travel is declining year upon year and currently accounts for not more than 15%. The percentage share of air travel, on the other hand, is rapidly growing. The main growth factor, however, are not long-distance flights but short-distance flights within Europe. Meanwhile, 80% of all flights out of Amsterdam cover distances of less than 800 km. Tourism is consequently a major contributor to the global greenhouse effect. 

• Many destinations put their stakes on event, entertainment and experience tourism which is particularly traffic-intensive. As a result, the average duration of stays at destinations is falling while the number of short-stay and weekend holidays is rising.

• Some of the most popular tourism destinations along the coasts, on the Mediterranean islands or in the Alps show clear signs of being overburdened by tourism: water shortage, higher frequency of land slides and avalanches due to deforestation.

• The attraction of European destinations derives from unique natural landscapes combined with a cultural wealth which covers the range from the traditional to the innovative. The tourism sector depends to a high degree on sustainable development, in other words on preserving an intact environment, on promoting regional culture and on safeguarding the local population's quality of life.

Against better knowledge tourism in Europe is regarded as a purely local matter, and policy competence for tourism is consequently located  below Member State level. However, supply and demand are spread over several countries, and tourism traffic impacts on a growing number of regions and municipalities not involved in and not benefiting in any way from tourism. 

The twelve associations, therefore, call upon the Member States of the European Union to develop and implement without further delay a comprehensive, common strategy for tourism and sustainability.

The main objectives of such a strategy must be to

• shift passenger-car traffic back to public modes of transport and bicycle use

• by imposing mileage-based levies on road use (exempting commuters as well as people living in rural areas who use cars for shopping trips and transportation),

• by raising landing and take-off charges for flights covering distances of less than 800 km and repealing the tax exemption for kerosene/aviation fuel,

• by co-ordinated European regulations for parking fees at tourism destinations and/or by making it mandatory for the operators of tourism facilities to contribute to the development of local public transport and cycling facilities,

• by promoting the provision of door-to-door luggage transport by railway companies, by promoting intermodality as well as innovative mobility options at tourism destinations;

• better co-ordinate holiday periods at the European level;

• provide incentives for longer stays in holiday areas

• for example by reducing value-added tax on overnight-stays exceeding one week;

• co-ordinate the framework conditions for spatial planning regulations at tourism destinations by

• introducing a Europe-wide infrastructure levy on tourism facilities with over 100 beds and over 100,000 visitors a year, which are situated outside the built-up municipal area,

• making the further development of leisure-time facilities dependent on the availability of water and/or the capacity of disposal utilities,

• making it mandatory for a municipality's ecologically valuable areas and spaces to be exempted from tourism development and/or to be designated as low-activity or protected areas,

• limiting subsidies to those tourism areas which conform to the concept of compact destination (short distances, access to public transport networks),

• harmonising and/or raising taxes on second homes;

• ban motorised leisure-time activities in nature and/or sensitive and endangered areas throughout Europe.

In the Fifth Environmental Action Programme of the European Union, which ended in 1999, tourism rightly figured as a priority field of action. When reviewed, however, the programme turned out to have been at best moderately successful, objectives being reached in very few cases only or being overtaken by developments. The European summit in Helsinki, in December 1999, requested the Commission and the Council of Ministers to prepare a Community strategy for sustainable development by the year 2001. This strategy is also intended to be the EU's contribution to the Rio+10 World Summit in 2002. Tourism must figure prominently in this European sustainability strategy.

In their Memorandum for a European Sustainable Tourism Strategy the twelve associations call upon the European Commission and the Member States to take the lead in safeguarding sustainability in the field of tourism and to pursue this aim by means of Community and national measures and instruments.