Climbing forward

Five years after its birth at the inaugural European Biennial Event of Highland Regions (1), the Club des CCI de Montagne (Club of CCIs in Highland Regions) is continuing on its way. “After widening our network to Greek, Rumanian and Albanian CCIs, we wish
to endow it with a Euro-Mediterranean dimension, by collaborating with Chambers from the Maghreb,” explains Yves Dubief, President of the CCI of Les Vosges, which pilots this club.
Encompassing around twenty foreign Chambers, partners in the context of the Réseau Européen des Acteurs Économiques de Montagne(2), the club may also open up to German and Italian CCIs. “We are looking to grow in numbers in order to promote economic activity in highland areas on a national and European scale.” The club equipped itself, in 2006, with a Scientific Committee on Mountainous Regions which has already opened up its work to the Maghreb. “We extended our working group to the sub-region in 2009,” recalls Laurent Rieutort, Lecturer and Researcher at the CERAMAC (Centre d’Éudes et de Recherches Appliquées au Massif Central, based in Clermont-Ferrand) and President of the Scientific Committee. “We have been working according to a multidisciplinary logic since the start. Our new Algerian and Moroccan colleagues are working in the domains of geography, territorial development and sociology.”
Hosting a doctoral student
Expenses stemming from research carried out by the Committee, today made up
of about fifteen persons, are essentially financed by the CCI of Les Vosges – the Chamber spends a total of 120,000 euros per year on its mountain initiatives.
The Presidents and General Managers of a few member Chambers(3) also sit in on meetings. “We meet three times a year in Paris, to take stock on research and the organisation of the European Biennial Event. The next edition, in 2011, will be on economic innovation,” notes Laurent Rieutort. A vast theme that will need some paring down: it is the Committee that will definine the angles adapted to mountain issues and select the guests.
The scientists are also preparing to welcome a doctoral student amongst them, currently being recruited by the CCI of Les Vosges. This student’s thesis subject should deal with “ways to adapt or readapt mountain tourist facilities in the face of new issues, notably climatic ones,” specifies the Scientific Commission.
The CCI of Les Vosges will be co-financing the doctoral student, alongside the French Ministry of Higher Education and Research. “This is a work-study programme (in the framework of an industrial convention on training via research, editorial note). The young researcher will spend part of his time in a laboratory in Pau, the rest of the time at the CCI of Les Vosges, from where he can establish ties with other economic actors in the territories. For the doctoral student, the objective of the programme is to be integrated into the working world.”
Playing on territorial cohesion
The Scientific Committee’s choice of this particular thesis subject indicates the Chamber’s desire to reflect on the future of the mountain tourism sector. But “other themes have been mentioned within the Club,” adds Laurent Rieutort, “such as the creation of VSEs in mountain zones, the development of personal services in a context of ageing populations in these zones, promoting regional heritage or transport and accessibility.”
The main goal behind these initiatives is to have its voice heard in Brussels. “In 2006, we presented, with the Inter-Chamber Association of the Massif central, a ‘wish book’ to the French Prime Minister, the European Commissioner for Transport (Jacques Barrot at the time, editorial note), as well as to representatives of the European Parliament,” tells Yves Dubief. The document, titled “What European policies for mountain zones?” demands recognition of the “specificities of mountain zones”, better accessibility, “the introduction of financing tools to invest in the development of all mountain zones”, and “the accordance of compensation for the debt to the mountain zones incurred by users of their rare resources based outside their territories”.
According to the President of the CCI of Les Vosges, these requests have led to an increase in financing allocated by the State, region, and the European fund FEDER, to the Comité du Massif des Vosges, the representative body grouping together the regions of Lorraine, Alsace and Franche-Comté. The sum has gone up from 20 million euros to 52 million in 2007 (2007-2013 inter-regional convention).
“We bring a scientific guarantee to the lobbying initiatives carried out by the Club,” declares Laurent Rieutort. “At the same time we work on new approaches to future economic and social issues at stake.” The Scientific Commission has thus supported the Club des CCI de Montagne, by contributing to the European Union’s Green Book on Territorial Cohesion, open for consultation between October 2008 and February 2009 and the object of a European Parliament resolution in March 2009. Chamber proposals notably called on the Commission to consider “the flows that make up the economy of mountainous regions: flows of money, persons and goods, and daily, residential, tourist mobility. […] Mobility issues are therefore fundamental in the mountainous regions, whether in terms of resources or possible hindrances to their development”, indicates the text dating from January 2009.
The CCI network fully intends to seize the opportunity represented by the European principle of territorial cohesion, recognised as an EU objective by the Lisbon Treaty. It is helped in this direction by the association Euromontana, which federates 69 organisations from 18 mountain-related countries, and is currently presided by André Marcon, also President of the UCCIMAC(3) and Vice-President of the Assembly of French Chambers of Commerce and Industry.

(1) The 3rd European Biennial Event of Highland Regions took place on 17 and 18 September 2009 in Plombières-les-Bains, on the theme of “Water in mountains (www.biennale-euro-montagne.eu).
(2) The Réseau Européen des Acteurs Économiques de Montagne was born in 2008 in Caciulata, Romania. It draws together 50 members of the Club des CCI de Montagne, 13 Chambers of the Association of Highland CCIs in Romania, the CCI of Romania, 5 Greek CCIs and the Union of Albanian CCIs.
(3) Notably the CCI of Les Vosges, UCCIMAC (inter-Chamber grouping of CCIs in the Massif Central), the CCI of Hautes-Alpes.