Ageing in mountain areas – Contributions of Euromontana for the Green Paper on Ageing

In January 2021, the European Commission published its EU Green Paper on Ageing, which aims at launching a political debate on ageing in Europe. As reminded by the European Commission in this communication, the European Union does not have a competence on most of issues related to ageing, such as healthcare and pensions. Therefore, the Green Paper proposes different working axes, which must be adapted according to national, regional and local contexts.

Given the importance of the ageing challenge for most mountain areas, Euromontana recently participated to the European Commission’s consultation on the Green Paper on Ageing to provide recommendations on how to adapt measures at national, regional and local levels.

This position paper provides recommendations on how to improve the quality of life of older adults in mountain areas, especially by:

• Ensuring accessible and adequate healthcare services, including by encouraging more practioners to stay or move to mountain areas, developing telemedicine and telemonitoring and proposing housing offers for vulnerable and dependent older adults that also take advantage of mountain areas’ natural assets.
• Building regional strategies to improve older people’s quality of life, for instance by supporting the Silver Economy sector which has a great potential both to assist older generations and to create jobs and strengthen social cohesion.
• Developing adapted transport offers (increased on-demand offer, stronger multimodality for instance) as well as ‘reversed mobility’ services to overcome the issue of mobility in mountain areas, including for active, vulnerable, and dependent people.
• Stimulating a mindset change by showcasing the important role of older generations for society, in particular in rural communities, and encouraging older people’s participation in local initiatives, social innovations and intergenerational activities.