The Diplomat
The Minister of Industry, Trade and Tourism, Reyes Maroto, defended before her G20 counterparts the health certificates proposed in the EU and the OECD to “restart safe international travel”.
“For Spain it is a priority at this time to accelerate the multilateral instruments to restart safe international travel, both the OECD Blueprint for safe international travel initiative and the Digital Green Pass being developed by the European Union”, said Maroto last Tuesday during her participation in the G20 Tourism Ministers’ meeting.
During the meeting, participants approved the G20 Rome Guidelines for the Future of Tourism, developed for the G20 by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to structure tourism recovery and based on seven policy areas: safe mobility, crisis management, resilience, inclusiveness, green transformation, digital transition, and investment and infrastructure. Likewise, the guidelines show their support for existing initiatives for safe international mobility, both those already undertaken in the EU (including the certificate proposal) and the OECD proposals (with express mention of the Blueprint for safe international travel).
“For Spain it is a priority to guarantee safe mobility in order to restore confidence in travel and revive international tourism and the Spanish economy in general”, continued Reyes Maroto. Another priority, she said, is to implement the Tourism Sector Transformation and Modernization Plan, which is going to mobilize 3.4 billion euros of public investment over the next three years financed by the Next Generation EU.
“Our goal is to maintain Spain’s leadership in world tourism, and to this end we will address, together with the reactivation of the sector, the necessary transformations to modernize our tourism model, with pillars based on sustainability, quality, safety and digitalization as a roadmap”, said Maroto, who concluded his speech with a message of “hope for the progress of vaccination around the world, which we hope will accelerate”.
