Brussels, 05/10/2006 (Agence Europe) - Last week's Competitiveness Council adopted conclusions on a new European tourism policy. Highlighting the fact that this activity can play an important role in helping reach the objectives in the strategy for growth and employment, and underlining that that this area involved dealing with a fragile heritage that required specific efforts to ensure tourism respected the objectives of sustainable development, the Council called on the Commission, Member States and industry in the sector to work together so that tourism related issues were taken more into account at a political level and common initiatives were implemented (notably the exchange of best practices). Ministers also called for: the Commission to ensure coordination of national policies, facilitation of contacts between stakeholders and to keep them informed about issues and developments likely to have an impact on tourism; that Member States improved their regulation for implementing a more tourism-friendly framework and promote the use of European financial instruments for tourism related projects; industry to be more pro-active by proposing regulatory and other measures to political decision makers, on often complex issues in the tourism sector, better into account. (il)