On 25 January 2016, the Commissioner for Regional Policy Corina Creţu and Commissioner for Transport Violeta Bulc participated in the launch of the EU Strategy for the Alpine Region.

The document aims at developing a macro-regional strategy involving five EU countries nemely Austria, France, Germany, Italy and Slovenia and two non-EU countries: Switzerland and Lichtenstein.

The Commission adopted a Communication and an Action Plan on the EU Strategy for the Alpine Region on 28 July 2015. The strategy focuses on stimulating an innovative and sustainable growth model; the seven countries of the macro-region will be able to step up a gear in their cooperation in the fields of research and innovation, support to SMEs, mobility, tourism, environmental protection and resource management.

More specifically, the Strategy covers three policy areas:

1. economic growth and innovation;

2. mobility and connectivity;

3. environment and energy.

Morover the the following objectives are identified in the Strategy:

• Fair access to job opportunities by building on the high competitiveness of the Region;
• Sustainable internal and external accessibility;
• A more inclusive environmental framework and renewable and reliable energy solutions for the future. 
• In addition, there will be a cross-cutting objective aiming to build: a sound macro-regional governance model for the Region, in order to improve cooperation and the coordination of action.

Copy of the European document is available at the following link:

http://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/sources/cooperate/alpine/eusalp_communicationtion_en.pdf