The Blue Growth Community, an initiative funded by the EU, adopted a Position Paper in reaction to the European Commission Communication on a Sustainable Blue Economy Strategy.
The position paper offers key messages identified by the Blue Growth Community related to areas covered by the Commission’s communication. The main areas covered by the position paper are circular blue economy, maritime spatial planning, research and innovation, blue investments, blue skills, maritime security, territorial cooperation, and marine renewable energies.
A section of the paper is dedicated to a sectoral approach for ensuring the sustainability of Coastal and Maritime tourism, which extensively covers recreational boating and yachting at different levels. In particular, this section proposes the following approaches:
- recommends a new model of recreational boating and yachting aligned with the Cohesion Policy principles in the maritime sector and in accordance with the European Green Deal
- promotes the adoption of a new economic business model to boost innovation, improve competitiveness, protect the environment and favour employment in the recreational boating and yachting sector
- encourages the development and optimisation of innovative technologies and services related to “smart marinas/ports” and small/medium ports for improving the ports’ ecosystem management and their environmental quality
- supports the implementation of enabling measures for sustainable growth of the recreational boating and yachting sector. This includes the development of networks, inclusion in marketing activities by tourism destinations, alignment of reduced VAT rates across the entire tourism sector, and steps towards the mutual recognition of boater and professional skipper qualifications at EU level.
EBI, which is an active member of the Blue Growth Community, contributed to the paper by suggesting several solutions to improve European coastal tourism from the perspective of the boating industry. All EBI’s comments were integrated in the final version of the paper which is aligned with the key demands of the boating sector.