Dear Sirs,

The Carpathian Memorandum published below is a document created after this year's Economic Forum in Krynica. It concerns a new European Union programme for the Carpathians, including the Podkarpacie region, for which I am currently working. I would like to ask for your opinions on this matter and to support the idea of this program. Please send me your letters to: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected].

Marek Kuchciński

Carpathian Memorandum

The Carpathians are an important part of Europe's regional wealth. It is an area with great social, cultural and natural resources, and at the same time one of the poorest and least recognized regions, requiring coordinated support within the framework of European policy. The Carpathians have several important assets.

Firstly, they connect territories of strategic importance across the current borders of the EU - from the very core of Central Europe: Firstly, they connect territories of strategic importance across the current borders of the Union - from the very core of Central Europe, i.e. Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary, through Ukraine, to the Balkans with Romania and Serbia. Secondly, they constitute a unique environmental resource, being the "green backbone" of Central and Eastern Europe. Thirdly, it is a culturally and socially important region, inhabited by nearly 20 million people. The Carpathians are also a problem area.

Its basic weaknesses include infrastructural deficiencies, both in transportation and environmental safety, lack of due care for sustainable development, social problems, including areas of high unemployment. If we do not take coordinated development actions, the economic and social problems of the Carpathian region will grow. Therefore, we believe that the efforts of countries, the European Union and individual regional authorities should be combined to develop a common strategy for the Carpathians, which would use the strengths of this area to overcome its weaknesses.

Such a strategy, following the example of the Baltic Sea Strategy and the Danube Strategy, should first and foremost be based on synergies between existing initiatives and actions undertaken in the region, thus providing added value without creating new structures, regulations or institutions. We want to apply for funding for the Carpathian region in a coordinated manner, so that the resources, especially from the EU budget, are not dispersed but strategically directed towards joint Carpathian projects.

A mechanism aimed at financing joint activities aimed at sustainable development of the Carpathians could be created based on models provided by both the current EU macro-regional development strategies and initiatives such as the European Alpine Space programme. (Alpine Space).

The number of existing good practices and initiatives in the Carpathian region convinces us that - with a well-developed strategy - we can achieve the desired concrete results of a new initiative in a relatively short period of time, be it in the field of academic cooperation ("Carpathian University"), environmental cooperation, infrastructure cooperation or the interregional project "Carpathian Horizon".

Such cooperation will serve in particular to strengthen ties between EU Member States and Ukraine, contributing to the accelerated integration of this country into European structures. A first step that could symbolically, as well as practically, demonstrate the commitment of European policy to the Carpathian region would be for the European Union to become a party to the Carpathian Convention, to which individual states are currently signatories. The Union, having been given such an opportunity by the Treaty of Lisbon, should make use of it in this type of initiatives.

Our common goal is to create a new European macro-regional development strategy already within the framework of the future financial framework 2014-2020. This is possible with the support of the main actors of European policy, both at the level of successive presidencies as well as the Commission and the European Parliament.

We call for such a commitment. The Carpathians are worthy of a European strategy.

September 2011.