LexALP hinges on the Convention on the Protection of the Alps (Alpine Convention), the framework agreement signed by eight countries of the Alpine arc (Germany, France, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, Slovenia, Liechtenstein, Monaco) and the European Union. The contracting parties aim at protecting the natural ecosystem of the Alpine region and at promoting its sustainable development through a more careful and responsible use of its resources, in the respect of the Alpine population’s cultural and economic interests.
Terminology work and harmonisation work focus in particular on the Alpine Convention Protocol on 'Spatial Planning and Sustainable Development', which in article 9 requires contracting parties to carry out priority intervention plans and/or programmes in the areas of
- conservation of nature and landscape protection
- transport
- regional economic development
- rural areas
- urban areas
These five priority areas – further expounded upon in other Protocols to the Frame Convention – were adopted as basis for the structure for the LexALP Corpus and Term Bank, i.e. for the classification of all the supranational, national and regional legal documents in the LexALP Corpus as well as of all the terminology collected within the project.