Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Views from Beyond Europe
C. Michael Hall
The enlargement of the European Union through
the accession of new member states is an event
of global consequence for tourism, even though
many of the impacts will likely be indirect and
may also take many years to become apparent.
From an external perspective, one of the most
important points that can be made is that the
latest accession of states to the EU follows a suc-
cession of 'New Europes'. Each time a country
or group of countries has joined the EU or its pre-
decessors there has been a shift in governance,
policy settings and activities across a wide range
of policy areas, many of which have directly and
indirectly affected tourism not just in Europe but
throughout the world.
One of the main areas, for example, in
which bilateral and multilateral change has
occurred in relation to EU expansion is with
respect to international trade in products and
services. Historically, international trade rela-
tions 'shift' for existing trading partners of acces-
sion countries upon joining the EU because
of the priorities given to the members of the
European Union or its predecessors and the
creation of new bilateral and multilateral trad-
ing conditions. For example, the emergence
of a 'crisis' in the agricultural economies of
Australia and New Zealand is often traced
back to the United Kingdom joining Europe in
1973 and the subsequent loss of preferential
trade arrangements for those countries. Such
shifts in trade often have far-reaching and
unexpected implications - in the case of the cri-
sis in Australian and New Zealand agriculture,
for example, the development of rural tourism
opportunities as a response to problems of
economic restructuring.
However, each 'new Europe' constitutes not
just a shift in trade, but also a change in inter-
national relations, regulation and governance,
although, clearly, trade is a significant compo-
nent of such relations. Just as importantly, the
latest EU enlargement was the largest in terms
of population and created the world's largest
market by economic output. This has been
viewed as positive by international tourism
bodies such as the World Travel and Tourism
Council and the World Tourism Organization,
although typically without any critical evaluation
of the implications for non-EU countries. Indeed,
within Europe itself there is arguably little inter-
est outside of the tourism policy community as
to the impacts of accession on tourism, and
even less on the international community (e.g.
Verheugen, 2003).
This chapter seeks to place the implications
of the latest European enlargement into a wider
international context. However, as the European
Commission (2004) itself has observed, 'Any
discussion of the EU's recent enlargement, as
well as those still to come, risks “expanding to
fill the available space”'. Nevertheless, some
observations may perhaps be reasonably made,
even if only to emphasize how little attention
