Mountain areas shall be those characterised by a considerable limitation of the possibilities for using the land and an appreciable increase in the cost of working it due:
- to the existence, because of altitude, of very difficult climatic conditions, the effect of which is substantially to shorten the growing season,
- at a lower altitude, to the presence over the greater part of the area in question of slopes too steep for the use of machinery or requiring the use of very expensive special equipment, or
- to a combination of these two factors, where the handicap resulting from each taken separately is less acute but the combination of the two gives rise to an equivalent handicap.
