Vigo, 11th April 2018.- Representatives from eight European cross-border regions will meet next week in Zamora within the framework of the European project EPICAH, financed by INTERREG EUROPE aiming a more efficient management of cross-border natural and cultural heritage "using" the border as a tourist attraction factor in borders territories.
Tourism is one of the big European economic motors, but it doesn’t have a defined European policy either than a financial instrument, both elements permanently requested by local and regional entities, particularly by those that foster the cross-border tourism.
EPICAH project, developed since January 2017, will hold in Zamora its fourth work meeting, with the participation of representatives from eight European cross-border regions. During the meeting of Tuesday, 17th participants will tackle the report that a pool of international experts has elaborated for this project about the situation and potentialities of the border tourism. This report, that will be sent to the European Commission before summer, gather a set of recommendations about the inclusion of tourism policies in the objectives and priorities of the Structural Funds financing for the next period 2021-2027.
Seminar
Within these meetings, on Wednesday it will be holding a seminar open to the tourism sector in general, where participants will debate about some of the reference models in the territory in emergent fields in Europe such as wine tourism or thermal tourism. Concretely, the experiences of Zamora, Eurocity Chaves-Verín and Ribeira Sacra will be analysed. This last one is a wine tourism area which is applying for its classification as UNESCO Human Heritage.
In the seminar will participate representatives of the cross-border programs from both the Spanish Ministry of Finances and the Portuguese Agency, as well as the manager of Xacobeo, in charge of the coordination of the Way of Saint James.