The Conference of the Parties

1. Welcomes the progress made in establishment of the Carpathian Sustainable Tourism Platform (CSTP) by signature of the memorandum by Romania,Ukraine and Poland initiating the cooperation, appreciates the efforts made by the Parties directly involved in the process, and encourages all the Parties to actively participate in implementation of the Protocol on Sustainable Tourism to the Carpathian Convention (hereinafter Tourism Protocol) and the Strategy for the Sustainable Tourism Development of the Carpathians, and requests the Secretariat to elaborate collaborative agreements with the centers;

2. Welcomes cooperation with Ecological Tourism in Europe (ETE) and CEEweb for Biodiversity implementing the project Support for the implementation of the Strategy for Sustainable Tourism Development of the Carpathians, and appreciates the financial support of the Federal Environment Agency (UBA) on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety and the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation, provided to ETE for this purpose;

3. Welcomes the Set of Indicators for measuring the positive and negative effects of tourism in the Carpathians, developed within the same project, and invites the WG Tourism to consider the Set of Indicators as a useful source for the implementation of Article 24 of the Tourism Protocol;

4. Takes note of the organization of the Workshop on the Implementation of the Protocol on Sustainable Tourism to the Carpathian Convention into the National Law on 12 – 13 December 2016 in Vienna, Austria, funded by the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation and acknowledges involvement of the ETE and the Secretariat in related preparations to the Workshop;

5. Welcomes the approval of the project CARPATHIAN TOURISM: Cooperation of V4 Countries, financed by the Visegrad Fund which aims at empowering local entrepreneurs to improve handicraft workshops as tourism services and to increase quality and visibility of other rural tourism initiatives, which contributes to the implementation of Article 11 of the Tourism Protocol;

6. Appreciates the activities undertaken by the Association of the Carpathian Euroregion Poland in cooperation with Swiss partners, and other stakeholders in the Carpathian region, in the area of creating the Carpathian brand CARPATHIA, and invites the CSTP and its centers to further elaborate on the development of the common Carpathian brand.