Farming in mountain areas
Recommendation 517
(1968)
- Author(s):
- Parliamentary Assembly
- Origin
- Assembly Debate on 1st February 1968 (19th Sitting) (see Doc. 2313, report of the Committee on Agriculture). Text adopted by the Assembly on 1st February 1968 (19th Sitting).
The Assembly,
2. Considering that mountain areas represent an important actual and potential value of economic and social significance for the European region as a whole and that the mountain population fulfils an important task in maintaining certain basic requirements for the future development of these areas ;
3. Concerned about the rapid depopulation in certain mountain areas and the ensuing deterioration of general, cultural and social amenities, which, in turn, tends to accelerate the depopulation trend ;
4. Believing that in some major areas only an integrated regional development policy, disregarding national boundaries, would be likely to yield satisfactory results as to the revaluation of these areas ;
5. Taking cognisance of the aspirations of the population in mountain areas and recognising their claim for equal chances of social and economic progress, and appreciating the efforts made by Governments to alleviate the difficult situation of the farm population in mountain areas,
6. Recommends the Committee of Ministers, in consultation with its subsidiary bodies, such as the Committee on Cooperation in Municipal and Regional Matters and the European Committee for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources :
a to work out criteria which may serve as a basis for the uniform delimitation of homogeneous mountain areas in Europe ;
b to establish international cooperation on regional policies aiming at the maintenance and development of the economic and social potentialities of homogeneous mountain areas, while taking into account the following requirements in particular :
to promote general economic and social conditions in mountain areas by developing and maintaining adequate infrastructures, such as transport, communications, school buildings, hospitals and other public amenities ;
to encourage the strengthening and harmonisation of research devoted to European mountain areas ;
to promote a judicious policy for the improvement of agrarian structures, including educative and advisory work programmes, bearing in mind the need for adequate local area-planning, delimiting industrial and settlement areas in relation to agricultural land ;
to review the legislative and economic planning of forests and pastures and to increase the production assets of mountain farms by providing State forests to enlarge communal forests ;
to provide the farming population with additional or alternative opportunities of income, for instance, by promoting tourist facilities and rational development of industry in rural areas ;
to grant, as and when expedient, compensation to farmers for the maintenance of recreational landscape and settlement areas.
