Who We Are

Charter secretariat - EUROPARC Directorate

The multi-national team based at the EUROPARC Headquarters and our office in Brussles, comprises a small core staff. Together they coordinate the varied activities of the EUROPARC Federation across Europe.

Please feel free to contact us at the following emails:

General enquiries: office@europarc.org

• Director: Carol Ritchie (Scotland, UK), c.ritchie@europarc.org. Languages: English and French.
• Deputy Director: Richard Blackman (UK), r.blackman@europarc.org. Languages: English, German and French.
• Communiations Officer: Morwenna Parkyn (UK), m.parkyn@europarc.org. Languages: English, German and Spanish.
• Project Manager: Diana Gallrapp (DE), d.gallrapp@europarc.org. Languages: German, Spanish, English. Responsible for Alfred Toepfer Scholarships, NatuRegio.
• Project Officer: Petra Dippold (DE), p.dippold@europarc.org. Languages: German, English, Spanish, French. Responsible for the European Charter for Sustainable Tourism
• Project Officer: Federico Minozzi (IT), f.minozzi@europarc.org. Languages: Italian, French, English. Responsible for Slow Food, Junior Rangers.
• Office Manager: Sabine Schloegel, s.schloegel@europarc.org. Languages: German, English

EUROPARC Sections

The EUROPARC Sections are an important element of the Charter Network. They act as the national contact point for Charter Areas and Charter Candidates and support the EUROPARC Federation in further developing the European Charter for Sustainable Tourism:

• EUROPARC Spain, Javier Gómez Limón (ES), javiergl@europarc-es.org
• EUROPARC Italy - Federparchi, Stefania Petrosillo (I), coopint.federparchi@parks.it
• EUROPARC France, Fédération des Parcs Naturels Régionaux, Olaf Holm, oholm@parcs-naturels-regionaux.tm.fr, Parcs Nationaux, Anne Lepine, anne.lepine@parcnational.fr
• EUROPARC Nordic Baltic
• EUROPARC Atlantic Isles, Dan Bloomfield (UK), dan.bloomfield@europarc-ai.org

Charter Evaluation Committee

An Evaluation Committee of professionals, experienced experts in protected areas and sustainable tourism, has been appointed by the EUROPARC Federation. It was re-formed in 2003 to ensure that a wide range of perspectives was represented. The Committee considers the park’s full application together with the verifier’s report and decides whether the park fulfils the requirements to be awarded the Charter or not. At present, the Evaluation Committee meets once a year, in the summer (following completion of the verification process).

The members of the Committee are as follows:

• Dr Patrizia Rossi, Chair (Alpi Marittime Nature Park, Italy)
• Josep Maria Prats (La Garrotxa Nature Park, Spain)
• Dr Richard Denman (Tourism Consultant, United Kingdom)
• Manfred Pils (Naturfreunde International, Austria)
• Mila Dahle (TUI AG)

EUROPARC Consulting

Charter verifiers

Once a protected area has decided to work with the Charter and is ready for verification it must submit a full range of application documents to EUROPARC. On receiving a park’s application, it will be checked for completeness and an expert in sustainable tourism in protected areas will be appointed as the verifier for the park. The verifier will examine the application, visit the protected area and make an assessment report. The verification visit usually takes two days. The verifier will conduct interviews with personnel of the protected area responsible for tourism and should also meet a selection of other stakeholders involved in tourism in the area, including representatives of tourism enterprises. At the moment 20 Charter verifiers from seven countries are available for the verification visits. They are all trained carefully by the EUROPARC Federation and are all experts in the field of sustainable tourism and/or protected area management: