Title: Sustainability in European tourism policy-making after the treaty of Lisbon

Authors: Tania Pantazi

Addresses: Undergraduate programme in Tourism Management (DIT), Hellenic Open University, Patra, 26335, Greece

Abstract: Tourism policy in the European Union is an area of supporting competence and coordination, with a limited legal basis for action introduced by the Treaty of Lisbon in 2007. Sustainability has been on the agenda of European policymakers for at least thirty years. This paper reviews, categorises and chronologically presents institutional documents and studies prepared for European bodies, mainly collected from the Publications Office of the European Union, in order to identify in which way sustainability has been incorporated into tourism policy-making since 2007. Findings reveal a gradual change in political priorities after 2015 and the emergence of sustainability as the principal matter of discussion in European tourism documents. The current European action plan has the green and digital transition at its core, but EU action remains supplementary in nature and the most important advancements are expected to occur in the context of other European policies.

Keywords: European Union; sustainability; tourism policy; institutional documents; green and digital transition.

DOI: 10.1504/IJTP.2025.148957

International Journal of Tourism Policy, 2025 Vol.15 No.4, pp.328 - 345

Received: 21 Dec 2023
Accepted: 02 Jul 2024
Published online: 06 Oct 2025 *

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