On May 24th, 2012 the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Hungary in Ukraine Mihály Bayer on behalf of the Government of Hungary signed the Protocol on Sustainable Tourism to the Framework Convention on the Protection and Sustainable Development of the Carpathians at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine.
The Framework Convention on the Protection and Sustainable Development of the Carpathians was signed in 2003 by the Governments’ representatives of seven countries: Hungary, Czech Republic, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia and Ukraine. The Framework Convention defines only the areas of cooperation, the concrete joint actions and responsibilities are specified in the protocols to the Convention.
The main purpose of the newly signed Protocol dealing with tourism is the realization of sustainable tourism development in the Carpathian region. The Protocol recognizes the growing importance of tourism and its role in the economic development of underdeveloped areas in the Carpathian region. The Protocol defines as objective the reduction of negative impacts of tourism, the elaboration and the implementation of common quality standards, the creation of the policies of sustainable tourism development and their integration into other sectoral policies, the formation of the concept of the Carpathian region as a tourism brand, and the creation of sustainable tourism products, services, and packages. The Protocol puts the necessity of the tourism development in a wider context, and pays attention to the influence of tourism development on the agriculture, education, cross-border development, and transport.