European Union influence over tourism employment

Abstract

This paper examines the role of the European Union (EU) in influencing employment in the tourism industry of its member states. Tourism in EU accounts for about 5% of GDP and approximately 7.4 million persons are directly employed in tourism. The figure of persons directly employed in tourism varies from 1.7 to 7.8 depending on the member state. Due to the potential of EU tourism for generating jobs in this paper undertakes a review over the problems related to tourism employment in member states and analyses the formation and development of EU policies and initiatives towards tourism employment. Finally, this paper discusses the implications of the findings for torism employment in EU and provides the conclusions of the study.