Brussels: Europe and the Arabs

After a summer of devastating wildfires in Spain, Italy, France, Belgium, Croatia, and Greece, members of the European Parliament told Playbook that the European Union must take action to support tourism-dependent southern European regions. According to Playbook's Brussels-based website, the European edition of Politico, Socialist MEP Daniel Attard, a senior member of the European Parliament's tourism task force and a MEP for Malta, a leading tourist destination, said: "We should all be concerned." He added that the EU must focus on transitioning to "new sectors, skills, and high-quality jobs" so that tourism-dependent regions are not left vulnerable to increasingly frequent extreme weather events. Scientists warn that wildfires could consume an additional 39% of Europe's land area even in the best-case scenario, while the EU's Joint Research Centre warns that climate change will lead to a decline in tourist arrivals to sunny southern Europe.

Nikolina Brnjak, a center-right Croatian MEP and former tourism minister, expects the heat waves to "decline tourism during the traditional peak summer season," and that tourist destinations "will have to plan a different distribution of tourism offerings throughout the year, with a focus on late spring and early autumn." Brnjak also noted that the EU's efforts in forest fire prevention and control are gaining increasing importance and should be included in the European Strategy for Sustainable Tourism, due to be launched later this year.

There is precedent for EU intervention: some countries have asked the Commission to compensate tour operators for losses incurred due to the Russian war in Ukraine. But Carlo Fidanza, a Brothers of Italy MEP, warns that the EU is unreliable when it comes to relief funds, as the money pledged by the Commission to help the hospitality sector recover from the COVID-19 pandemic has yet to be disbursed. "It's absurd to create illusions" that support will be available, Fidanza says. A three-pronged approach: A European Commission spokesperson stated that the upcoming tourism strategy “will address sustainability issues in their broadest sense: economic, environmental, and social.” But the sector’s resilience should not be underestimated: “So far, the tourism sector has shown good resilience across Europe. Destinations and businesses are preparing better and faster.” The spokesperson added that many destinations in southern Europe are well-equipped to handle heat waves.

The threat isn’t just weather-related. Professor Dimitri Vayanos of the London School of Economics says overcrowding is the main challenge, as “destinations are struggling to manage the ever-increasing influx of tourists, which is causing a decline in the quality of their products.” Travelers may also be forced to seek out new destinations due to local discontent stemming from the high cost of living, inadequate infrastructure, and water scarcity exacerbated by climate change.

The action plan arrived in Brussels in 2015 and transformed the way the city began its day. Now, it has arrived in Canberra: a capital city with a similar number of officials that, until now, has not had its own daily briefing. In other articles, Playbook magazine reported on the drying up of the Danube: The Danube's declining water levels are affecting shipping and nuclear power plants, and Europe is struggling to figure out how to deal with the problem, according to a report by Jacob Wiseman and Elena Giordano.

Analysts' anger: Data analysts at the European Union's powerful financial markets regulator are deeply dissatisfied with their bosses, according to a new internal survey obtained by Bjarke Smith-Mayer and Hannah Brinton.

Resignations from the White House: Top Trump administration officials are resigning from the White House ahead of the crucial midterm elections in November, adding to the uncertainty at an already critical time, as my colleagues in Washington explain.

Brexit twins' predicament in Britain: John Stone reported that a woman was stranded at a foreign airport after the Brexit settlement system misidentified her as her identical twin and prevented her from boarding her flight home.