Europe of the Carpathians

Europe of the Carpathians is a series of international conferences and a dialogue forum covering the countries on whose territory the Carpathians are located, but also neighbouring countries. It is related to the "Green Carpathians" project, which aimed to develop Polish-Slovak-Ukrainian cooperation.

Creating the initiative was the need for balanced development of Central and Eastern European regions (including Polish voivodeships), but also the need to implement the policy of "balance of economy and ecology".

The main challenges in all Carpathian countries' mountain and foothill areas are the growing scarcity of drinking water and the extensive flood damage. Voivodeships located in the Vistula basin are particularly vulnerable in Poland.

The very idea of the initiative is related to the Framework Convention on the Protection and Sustainable Development of the Carpathians, prepared in 2003 in Kyiv, which eventually became the essential document constituting cooperation in the Carpathian region.

The signatories of the Convention were: the Czech Republic, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Ukraine and Hungary, and the action proposal was modelled on the Alpine Convention.

The signatories recognized the Carpathians as a unique area of Europe. They adopted the model of sustainable development of the Carpathians, which requires international cooperation regardless of the state borders due to the universal nature of the interests of the inhabitants of the Carpathian cities and villages.

The aim of the initiative was also to increase the region's development potential in overcoming the effects of communism and the potential enlargement of the European Union by the countries of Central Europe. The Carpathian Convention defined the scope of the region, but its borders were to be freely defined by the signatory states (regardless of historical, geographical or economic criteria). The planned area could include both mountains and foothills, lowlands and valleys.

The signatories undertook to protect the region's biological, landscape and cultural diversity and conduct a coordinated spatial planning policy.

The most important were: the development of infrastructure and services, the principles of using natural resources, environmental protection, farming and forestry, protection of cultural heritage and recognition of folk knowledge.

The end of the stage of building the Carpathian cooperation took place in November 2007 in Warsaw at a meeting organized by the then chairman of the Committee on Environmental Protection, Natural Resources and Forestry of the Polish Parliament, MP Marek Kuchciński for the parliamentarians of the Carpathian states.