On the 10th of May, Mrs Cristina Nunez, from the Permanent Secretariat of NECSTouR, met with 25 representatives of the "Amigos do Camiño de Santiago" (Friends of the Saint James' Way) at the "Galicia Europa" Foundation in Brussels.

She explained our initiatives on Competitive and Sustainable Tourism, focusing on the main challenges for managers of European Itineraries in contemporary Europe and which opportunities NECSTouR can provide.

Mrs Nunez identified as main challenges:
- A High potential not sufficiently exploited of  Itineraries towards European tourism products
- Lack of administration and dedicated budget
- EU funding available but not targeted

NECSTouR can help to face this challenges:
- It will participate indeed to the Cultural Routes summer school
- It will support the proposal of taking Cultural Routes as an instrument to implement the European Thematic Year 2018 of Cultural Heritage
- It is supporting the Joint promotion of Destination Europe, taking into account the huge potential offered by Cultural Routes

Mrs Nunez concluded her intervention by inviting the participants to proide their inputs on how to ensure the future sustainability of the SPIRIT YOUTH Project: a project lead by NECSTouR who has been now concluded (final conference of Spirit Youth)