Central Mountains

The Alps and the Carpathians are one of the most important natural corridors linking Central European countries. Despite their unique natural attractiveness, many of these territories are cross-border areas facing challenges related to strengthening territorial cohesion across borders, lack of a joint vision and effective cooperation, lack of finance, and lack of citizen involvement.
The “Central Mountains” project addresses the challenge of achieving a long-lasting, sust. cooperation across borders in mountain areas through improved governance structures and processes that are critical for strengthening regional development and cohesion beyond borders. These structures for cross-border and transnational cooperation will support autonomous operation and continuous coordination, not working in the project cycles exclusively dependent on EU funding. The project's innovation lies in the innovativeness of its transnational approach (Alpine-Carpathian perspective) and outputs focused on governance structures. The main project's outputs: 1)  joint, pioneer strategy for the Alpine-Carpathian mountain areas, followed by action plans for selected territories, 2) renewed and operational structures: Carpathian Sustainable Tourism Platform, new Alpine EGTC structure and Carpathian Civil Society Platform, 3) designing and piloting Cross-Border Functional Areas as a new governance instrument for long-term cross-border cooperation, 4) joint solutions to be applied in mountainous areas in CE and beyond.