Check against delivery

Excellencies,

Ladies and gentlemen,

It is a great pleasure to be here for the opening of this event in Lucca – a staging post on the Cultural Route, Via Francigena.

We are of course here to celebrate 30 years of success for a unique, pioneering Programme that promotes European values.

The Council of Europe has always been acutely aware of the importance of culture and heritage.

Since 1949, these have been understood as crucial to promoting human rights, democracy and the rule of law, achieving greater unity among Europeans.

When the Santiago De Compostela Declaration was signed in 1987, it was a novel and exciting way in which to further those aims.

The main objective of the Programme was to encourage Europeans to embark on voyages of discovery: learning about each other, overcoming differences and celebrating diversity in order to create a more cohesive and inclusive society.

Cultural Routes were conceived as grassroots tools, by which Europe’s heritage and history would be better and more widely understood through exchanges among people from across the European continent and beyond.

This is about cultural diversity, mutual understanding, intercultural dialogue and cultural diplomacy.

Of course Europe – and the challenges we face – have changed since 1987.

But the values on which Cultural Routes are based, and the benefits that they bring, both endure.

As the past thirty years have rolled by, the Cultural Routes Programme has only grown stronger.

After 30 years, we have 31 certified routes, winding through all 47 Council of Europe member states and beyond, upheld and promoted by more than 1000 members of the networks.

We have worked hand-in-glove with other “founding fathers” of the Programme, namely the European Institute of Cultural Routes in Luxembourg and our external partners: the EU, the UNWTO and UNESCO, to which we express our thanks.

And since 2010 we have benefited from the Enlarged Partial Agreement on Cultural Routes (EPA), established by the Committee of Ministers, and which commits its members to provide financial and political support for local, regional, national and cross-borders initiatives.

These initiatives support culture, promote tourism and foster the collaboration among stakeholders and institutions that maximise the value of our Cultural Routes.

The Enlarged Partial Agreement had 13 founding members.

Today, as we celebrate 30 years of Cultural Routes, the EPA has thirty members too.

So let me congratulate the governments of Finland, Poland and San Marino, who joined just this year.

And I have the pleasure of announcing today that Turkey has decided to join the EPA and we look forward to receiving the letter of accession in due course.

These member states have taken a step towards further strengthening our Programme’s impact – and they have done so for good reason.

Because, when we pause to ask ourselves, what are Cultural Routes doing for our European values, the answers are strong and convincing.

Are they, for example, fulfilling their role as a tool for grassroots participation and democratic citizenship?

The answer is undoubtedly yes: because they are structured uniquely to facilitate exactly that.

Each route must operate as a transnational network, based on a legally established association, and bring together multiple European stakeholders from both the public and the private sectors.

This means that cultural route networks involve representatives from municipalities and local authorities, educational establishments and cultural institutions, non-profit enterprises and civil society organisations and, of course from the business, economic and professional sectors, including – crucially – the tourist industry.

Together, these networks promote the educational value of European heritage, with a heavy emphasis on involving young people from a wide variety of cultural, geographical and social backgrounds, so that they can meet, exchange viewpoints and develop their common European identity and citizenship.

Through these creative, multidisciplinary, intercultural exchanges links are forged between history and heritage on the one hand and contemporary art and culture on the other: they act as a creative bridge between the past and our present.

So it is fair to say by their very structure, Cultural Route networks have a specific capacity to reach across national borders, pull in diverse stakeholders and to reach out to a wide variety of participants in a common cultural cause.

This is grassroots participation shaping democratic citizenship.

At the local level, we should ask: are Cultural Routes contributing to local development?

It is clear that by opening up access to culture for all, through sustainable tourism at the local level, they are doing exactly that.

The 31 routes have all been selected and developed because of their unique circumstances and offering.

Those who follow them can expect to discover not only monuments, historical artefacts and archaeological sites, but landscapes, local produce and practices as well as traditions, beliefs and narratives.

This is a unique cultural offering for tourists.

Because the Programme reaches out to local SMEs and supports their contribution to the local economy – especially in less-developed, rural areas – we are able to generate tourism that enhances the cultural well-being of visitors and the economic well-being of residents alike.

Given that 90% of the territories crossed by the routes are off-the-beaten-track rural areas, sensitive development of local industries – whether in relation to transport, products, or food and accommodation – can be particularly valuable.

We are committed to supporting this in a respectful and sustainable way that maintains the heritage of local people and enhances their environment too.

Economic inclusion for local people is therefore not just a by-product of the Programme, but a practical and beneficial aim.

Finally, crucially, we should also ask ourselves: are Cultural Routes doing enough to foster intercultural dialogue and cultural diversity?

In fact, they could not do more.

After all, increasing awareness of Europe’s intrinsic cultural diversity is a primary purpose for the Programme.

Each unique route is an education for those it attracts.

It brings fellow travellers together in an appreciation of the local, national and European identity found along the way.

But by coming together from near and far to share that education, citizens not only see the differences in their surroundings but come together through intercultural dialogue to better understand both the value of that diversity and what they have in common as fellow Europeans.

This is a cultural exchange which shows Europe at its best: not simply talking about the need to build an open, plural and cohesive identity, but putting in place the mechanism through which citizens shape that identity for themselves, from bottom up.

You see it is not possible to implant an identity from on high; for people to adopt a common sense of belonging, they must see it, live it and abide by it of their own accord.

That is what intercultural dialogue is doing in Europe today, and Cultural Routes are making that happen.

Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, over the past three decades, this Programme has been a significant success.

That is why we are celebrating today the Committee of Ministers Declaration on the 30th Anniversary of the Cultural Routes of the Council of Europe, adopted this morning in Strasbourg.

Its signatories appreciate what so many of you here today – and so many others over the years – have managed to achieve.

So we take this occasion to show our gratitude to the networks’ presidents and managers, and to their staff and volunteers – all represented here at the Lucca Forum.

You are the core of the Programme’s success and the key, to maintaining what has been achieved and providing the impetus for further routes and increased understanding in the future.

Thank you.