The EU must therefore get on track now to ensure that mountain farmers, and thus the entire Alpine region, can have a decent future after 2013.

There are more than seventy cross-border regions in Europe today, operating under names such as Euroregions, euroregios or Working communities.

supporting economic and trade cooperation and strengthening investment relations between the Community and partner countries and regions, including by actions to promote and ensure that private actors, including local and European businesses, contribute to socially responsible and sustainable economic development, including respect for the core labour standards of the International Labour Organization (ILO) and by actions to promote local capacity building;

Considerable work has been done by means of a series of Commission studies and the Fourth and Fifth Framework Research Programmes, which have examined transport expenses in the Alpine regions and other regions, including the project relating to the information systems on Alpine transport and the European strategic multimodal model and the Alp-net project which is currently under way.

It consists of a platform of experts and policy makers composed of representatives from two communities which are not used to work closely together: the technology Foresight community and the regional development policy community.

Whereas it is necessary to strengthen the machinery for vacancy clearance, in particular by developing direct co-operation between the central employment services and also between the regional services, as well as by increasing and co-ordinating the exchange of information in order to ensure in a general way a clearer picture of the labour market ; whereas workers wishing to move should also be regularly informed of living and working conditions ; whereas, furthermore, measures should be provided for the case where a Member State undergoes or foresees disturbances on its labour market which may seriously threaten the standard of living ...[+++] and level of employment in a region or an industry ; whereas for 1 OJ No 268, 6.11.1967, p. 9. 2 OJ No 298, 7.12.1967, p. 10. 3 OJ No 57, 26.8.1961, p. 1073/61. 4 OJ No 62, 17.4.1964, p. 965/64. this purpose the exchange of information, aimed at discouraging workers from moving to such a region or industry, constitutes the method to be applied in the first place but, where necessary, it should be possible to strengthen the results of such exchange of information by temporarily suspending the abovementioned machinery, any such decision to be taken at Community level;