Frabrice Pannekoucke, President of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region and an active member of Euromontana, joined other French stakeholders in a meeting of the Interministerial Committee on the 2030 Olympic and Paralympic Games on Friday 27 June 2025. Among other topics, the alpine region received the support of the French Prime Minister François Bayrou for the European Mountain Pact, an initiative that the region has been promoting for several months in such bodies as the EU Strategy for the Alpine region (EUSALP) and published last March.

The French executive is backing the agreement, which aims to keep mountain areas dynamic and vibrant, by ensuring that the specific characteristics of mountain areas are recognised in European policies, in all key sectors such as European funds, tourism, energy transition, etc.

To this end, the agreement calls for the appropriate resources to be earmarked to meet the economic, social and environmental challenges facing mountain areas, and for the stakeholders involved in mountain policies at different levels of governance to join forces at European level. Among other things, the European Pact for Mountains also calls for the creation of a European Observatory for mountain regions and the creation of a harmonised European statistical database to monitor the situation of mountain regions in Europe in certain key areas.

Euromontana welcomes the initiative and the call for actions to mountain regions to make their voice heard, one of the messages carried by the association for 30 years and is delighted that this initiative has been added to the Alliance for European Mountains, launched in mid-May 2025. Euromontana is delighted to be working with AURA to help defend the cause of mountains in European policies.