Accessibility is an important aspect in the debate of regional development. It is used as an indicator to describe the territorial aspects of the transport system. Access to and from a region or city is considered an important aspect of the competitiveness of the location. During the last years efforts have been made to improve the accessibility of cities and regions in large parts of Europe. Many of these efforts have been related to improvements of the rail networks. 

Balanced overall growth is considered a precondition for reasonable equilibrium in living conditions across the entire EU territory. The economic success of a region can be assessed in many ways. A measure that is most often used is Gross Domestic Product (GDP) both in absolute figures and as a rate of change, the latter being helpful to measure economic growth.

Europe’s mountain areas are in many ways of great importance as they comprehend a set of features to be considered as territorial potentials, in particular as water resource, they have an ecological, cultural and environmental diversity, which is an asset.