Aiming to provide an overview on the tourism policy implemented by the European Economic Community from the early 1960s until today, the research gives a contribution to fill a gap in current European Integration History, since Historians devoted little attention to the role of tourism in the integration process. To achieve this goal, the article addresses the mutual interactions between the making of Europe and the spread of mass tourism, by a focus on the role played from the Commission and the Council in the field of leisure travel. Broadly speaking, achievements and contradictions of the attempts to set a true tourism policy throughout the decades are investigated. From a methodological point of view, the research owes to the so-called “new history of European integration”, to the extent that multiple layers are taken into account, in order to assess the consequences of EEC tourism policy on society as a whole.
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