On the 15th of April 2010, European Commissioner Antonio Tajani attracted attention and criticism after the British newspaper, The Sunday Times, reported he had unveiled a plan declaring tourism as a human right. According to the article, pensioners, youths and those too poor to afford it should have their travel subsidised by the taxpayer. Tajani's program will be piloted until 2013 and then put into full operation. In introducing his plan, Tajani stated, "Travelling for tourism today is a right. The way we spend our holidays is a formidable indicator of our quality of life." His spokesman added, "Why should someone from the Mediterranean not be able to travel to Edinburgh in summer for a breath of cool, fresh air; why should someone from Edinburgh not be able to travel to Greece in winter?
EurActiv, an independent media portal, criticized the article by The Sunday Times as an example of misleading information about the EU to appear in the British press and then picked up by other Anglo-Saxon media and blogs, and Wikipedia. EurActiv stated that "the article on The Sunday Times never quotes the commissioner as having made such a statement. Nevertheless, it pursues the argument under the headline "Brussels decrees holidays as a human right," underlining the alleged "hundreds of millions of pounds" that pursuing the idea would cost taxpayers." Wikipedia was criticized by EurActiv regarding the difficulty that Commissioner Tajani's team had with changing the wrong information on the encyclopedia, and echoed European Commission spokesperson Pia Ahrenkilde Hansen's statement that "ethics in digital communications is definitely a subject which deserves to be addressed.
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