The European Institute of Cultural Routes (EICR) has been installed in Luxembourg since July 1997 on the basis of a political Agreement signed between the Council of Europe and the Government of Grand Duchy of Luxembourg (Ministry for Culture, Higher Education and Research).
This institution aims, first of all, at ensuring not only the continuity but also the development of the cultural routes programme of the Council of Europe. Thus, the EICR is in charge of the coordinating the work of several public and private partners coming from the forty-four countries that have signed the European Cultural Convention.

The Institute set itself also the task of informing professionals as general public, and especially young Europeans, about the great ways of discovery that cross the continent and favour a better knowledge of its history and its memory.
The European dimension of its activities favours the concrete implementation of the main lines of the Council of Europe’s politics: European identity and cultural diversity, inter-religious dialogue, protection of the minorities, democratic security, conflict prevention, active European citizenship…

The Institute is also in charge of setting up European programmes of research and analysis regarding cultural tourism for the Government of Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, the institutions and project leaders or the European Commission.
In this framework, the European Institute of cultural Routes is involved, since 1999, in the project coordinated by the ICOMOS Bulgaria of creating Cultural Itineraries in South Eastern Europe. The Institute welcomed in 2002 and 2005 Bulgarian architects for training periods. They prepared the project of a Resource Centre for cultural routes in Bulgaria and a route on rural architecture in South Eastern Europe.

In the process launched 2005 at the occasion of the Regional Forum on Cultural Corridors of South East Europe and following the Varna Declaration of the 21 May 2005, the European Institute of Cultural Routes, as a European reference in the field of cultural tourism, is engaged in the promotion of cultural heritage and cultural corridors within the region through new technologies.

The Institute will work as closely as possible in order to create links with the various cultural routes of the Council of Europe crossing South East Europe and the main cultural corridors.
The Resource Centres opened in Sibiu and intended in Sofia will help to keep into connection all the partners working on culture and tourism within the frame of the Council of Europe programme.

Mr. Michel Thomas-Penette, Director of the European Institute of Cultural Routes, Luxembourg, Grand Duchy of Luxembourg