Okay, the headline is pure sensationalism and the anti-EU slant is blatant since this is an article from the Murdoch-owned The Times, but even after filtering out the propaganda, I think it’s still a pretty dire example of EU socialism. It’s a scheme to subsidize holiday travel for under-privileged citizens of the EU. From the article:
The scheme, which could cost hundreds of millions of pounds a year, is intended to promote a sense of pride in European culture, bridge the north-south divide in the continent and prop up resorts in their off-season.
Tajani, who unveiled his plan last week at a ministerial conference in Madrid, believes the days when holidays were a luxury have gone. “Travelling for tourism today is a right. The way we spend our holidays is a formidable indicator of our quality of life,” he said.
Now, this might not sound so bad if you think of it as just another form of economic stimulus though you’d think that they’d come up with better ideas to stimulate the economy than funding subsidies. How about throwing more money into education and job retraining programs instead? But what is really annoying is that the EU still wants to increase its expenses when the budgets of many of its member countries aren’t in such hot shape. Greece recently had one of its worst bond sales ever and there’s now a real chance that it could get ejected from the Euro.
The talk of traveling for tourism being a right also makes it a good case for making a distinction between positive and negative rights. I don’t really want to go into this debate again but it’s just one more example of how adding more and more “rights” just dilutes the really fundamental ones that actually deserve the moniker.
