All roads do certainly not lead to Toulouse, but Toulouse is passionate about roads. This is why the concept has been chosen for the programme to be put in place if the city is chosen to be European Capital of culture: On the Road to Europe.

For the most part, these are roads that carry major cultural movements common to all Europeans. They are not just simple thoroughfares, trade routes or non-goods transporters, even though they play an important role in opening up the city and the region to Europe and the world. Toulouse feels halfway between Paris and Madrid and has always considered itself European.

The Via Tolosana has not failed this tradition and this commitment. It is proud of its roads, to Compostela, to Galileo’s satellite imagery and to the Airbus A380 and is even more proud of the symbol that is Aeropostale. This famous "Line", that for the first time linked Europe and Toulouse to Africa and to the Americas, made globalisation a tangible reality at the beginning of the twentieth century. Toulouse’s remarkable contribution to Europe’s roads is part of its identity and its diversity.

In Toulouse, there are natural roads such as the Garonne. The city was born of a river that takes its source in a neighbouring country, Spain, and flows into the Atlantic crossing Bordeaux. Other aquatic roads are part of the landscape that traces great utopias such as the Canal du Midi, built at the instigation of the genius Riquet, joining the Atlantic and Mediterranean. And the pastel roads brought trade in "blue gold" to the four corners of Europe.

There are roads cut into the European landscape that characterise Toulouse and are often linked to spiritual matters. We think necessarily of Santiago de Compostela. But why not also Visigoth Arianism (from Alexandria to Toulouse), the Cathars (from Toulouse to Bosnia), Protestantism (Montauban to Geneva), all pilgrimages (from Rocamadour to Lourdes) and Roman art? And what about Occitanie with its transborder and European roads, poets of courtly love and troubadours that went from one European court to another? They started this passion for words dear to Toulouse shown later with Jean-Pierre Champollion the decryptor or Claude Nougaro, the smooth talker.

In the twentieth century there was aviation, Aeropostale personified by the great writer and pilot Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the Caravelle, Concorde and more generally space, the road to the moon, the stars and the road to science. These are all roads that make this city a European capital.

For the most part, these are roads that carry major cultural movements common to all Europeans. They are not just simple thoroughfares, trade routes or non-goods transporters, even though they play an important role in opening up the city and the region to Europe and the world. Toulouse feels halfway between Paris and Madrid and has always considered itself European.

The Via Tolosana has not failed this tradition and this commitment. It is proud of its roads, to Compostela, to Galileo’s satellite imagery and to the Airbus A380 and is even more proud of the symbol that is Aeropostale. This famous "Line", that for the first time linked Europe and Toulouse to Africa and to the Americas, made globalisation a tangible reality at the beginning of the twentieth century. Toulouse’s remarkable contribution to Europe’s roads is part of its identity and its diversity.

In Toulouse, there are natural roads such as the Garonne. The city was born of a river that takes its source in a neighbouring country, Spain, and flows into the Atlantic crossing Bordeaux. Other aquatic roads are part of the landscape that traces great utopias such as the Canal du Midi, built at the instigation of the genius Riquet, joining the Atlantic and Mediterranean. And the pastel roads brought trade in "blue gold" to the four corners of Europe.

There are roads cut into the European landscape that characterise Toulouse and are often linked to spiritual matters. We think necessarily of Santiago de Compostela. But why not also Visigoth Arianism (from Alexandria to Toulouse), the Cathars (from Toulouse to Bosnia), Protestantism (Montauban to Geneva), all pilgrimages (from Rocamadour to Lourdes) and Roman art? And what about Occitanie with its transborder and European roads, poets of courtly love and troubadours that went from one European court to another? They started this passion for words dear to Toulouse shown later with Jean-Pierre Champollion the decryptor or Claude Nougaro, the smooth talker.

In the twentieth century there was aviation, Aeropostale personified by the great writer and pilot Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the Caravelle, Concorde and more generally space, the road to the moon, the stars and the road to science. These are all roads that make this city a European capital.

There are roads that we don't choose, like exile, for example. Toulouse is a crossing point. The German philosopher Walter Benjamin stayed over before tragically dying on the Franco-Spanish border. This Republican Spain also remembers that its government in exile was based in Toulouse. The only good frontier is one that is crossed, or bypassed if necessary! The great poet Antonio Machado, who passed through Toulouse on a tragic route, said that "roads are built by walking". En el camino! En route!

The issue of roads is, we can see, central and determining for the future of Toulouse and The road theme has enabled us from the beginning of the application to work using a variety of approaches: geographic of course but also educational, scientific, technological, poetic, spiritual or historical.

Roads obviously produce geography, it’s their main application. They define spaces, territories that go beyond nations, languages or local interest. Europe, in its diversity, is at home in Toulouse and Toulouse also feels at home in the great European house. Comings and goings and the flow of population (almost 15,000 new arrivals every year) are not recent, they have forged the identity of this city. It is therefore dialogue and exchange that are at issue as well as Europe’s cultural trends mentioned that have been, are and will be shared. If the city is chosen European Capital of Culture, the majority of roads that will be developed during the year 2013 will be European.

The first roads built will necessarily be those that illustrate the strong points of Toulouse's application. There is full and determined commitment from the four major local authorities and a fruitful relationship binds them together. Many projects will connect Toulouse, the communes of Greater Toulouse, the Haute-Garonne department and the Midi-Pyrénées region. Not to mention the Lot, Aveyron, Tarn, Ariège, Hautes-Pyrénées, Gers and Tarn-et-Garonne departments and their principal cities: Cahors, Figeac, Rodez, Millau, Albi, Castres, Foix, Lourdes, Tarbes, Auch, Montauban. An entire Euroregion supports this application and the links between Toulouse, Midi-Pyrénées and the four other regions (Languedoc-Roussillon, Catalonia, Aragon and the Balearic Islands) are close.

We will be taking all the roads that connect Toulouse to the major cities that support the application. In France: Montpellier, Carcassonne, Narbonne, Perpignan and Sète. In Spain: Saragossa where projects will be developed for the Universal Exhibition of 2008 and of course Barcelona whose unequalled experience of major international events will be more than useful. In Europe, through Toulouse’s network of twin towns (Bologna, Elche and Kiev), its cooperation agreements (Düsseldorf), but also across the world in North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa and as far as towns in Latin America that were part of the Aeropostale adventure (Casablanca, Saint Louis du Sénégal, Recife).

These new roads may take us further to Africa, Latin America and Asia. They allow exchanges between the cultures of Europe and those of the wider world. This is the intercultural dialogue that will be proposed in the second phase of selection in 2008 during the European year of the same name. It is with cultural stakeholders in these major European cities and with their creators that the most emblematic and relevant projects will be put together where dialogue, in a space where it is neither natural nor necessarily easy, will be the most fertile. The transnational promotion of cultural stakeholders and the circulation of their work are two major objectives to be met.

Along with geography, roads also produce meaning because they are intended to take us somewhere. They are directions that are activated and give the problem of roads all its originality. "Roads take us somewhere. What is essential is not therefore the direction they take, but the fact that the direction exists" says Fedor Dostoevsky. We have decided to distinguish our paths between those that transmit something, those that create sharing and those that develop innovation.

Beyond the geographic dimension and the meaning, the question of time finally is central to Toulouse’s approach. A road is time, duration and a forecast. A road leads from one point to another, it represents a space certainly, it is part of the geography of a landscape, including in its most intimate acceptance, but it is also measurable by time, chronology and succession. Just as a road can tell a story and tells History, it also creates memory, it produces history, time and duration.

Firstly, of course, there is the time of the application. The application for the title of European Capital of Culture is in its own way, it has to be said, quite a road. We are not setting off on such a journey lightly or to play a walk on part. We are not committing so many partners, local authorities, human and financial resources to this long and arduous journey, we are not carrying with us so many hopes and dreams without a strong feeling of responsibility. The stakeholders in this application have taken, with much resolution, passion and belief, a journey against time, a long road, that of the decision and commitment.

Toulouse is obviously determined to go beyond 2008. Four years, from 2009 to 2012, to plan the cultural programme, finance it, produce it, promote it and welcome very wide audiences will not be too much. The Generation 2013 programme is an example as it aims to discover local talent through courses, master classes, training and experience on the ground. It is a road, firstly of transmission, that has been imagined. 2013 young ambassadors aged 12 in 2007 who will be 18 in 2013 and able to vote... These are the people who will build a major part of the road of the application. From 2009 to 2012, Toulouse will also explore the new Europe. Each year, it will invite three "capitals" of countries looking to join our "neighbours".

The duration of the cultural programme, one full year, 12 months of events plus one full month of opening, is a sizeable problem. The year 2013 has been conceived as a succession of roads and not a simple linear process, a list of rendezvous with no other guide than chronology. The "reversed time" theme proposes new cycles that will be disconcerting for the guardians of the calendar. Certain themes will last a few days or an extended weekend, others will last the entire year and some of them will allow the audience to spend a season "out of sync", to keep their attention intact and to share in the progression of events. The rhythm is essential to the success of the event. Sequences are designed to mobilise the commitment of audiences, the attention of the media and the quality of the series to a maximum. The scale of the projects and their size have been prioritised without ever ruling out support for smaller initiatives that appear less prestigious but also carry meaning.

The inauguration of this cultural programme will be "caustic", attractive and participative. On Wednesday 1st December 2012, each partner of the application will transform one or several of its squares into concourses dedicated to the European city. All places for knowledge, sharing, life, commerce and coming together. Over to Europe!

Finally, the road will go well beyond the year 2013. The evaluation will be an important time. Impact analyses will be indispensable. The visible effects (attendance, infrastructures) and other less tangible ones such as the image of the city will have to be precisely described. The medium and long-term dynamic is an essential element of the application. The continued existence of the projects, the establishment of solid cultural cooperation, regularly renewed or extended, that enable natural European circulation have been criteria of selection when choosing the 18 paths described from the large number of proposals. Part of wider urban development, these projects should have a certain longevity as part of regional cultural development determined by the four local authorities that are supporting the application. Everything has been done and thought of in this application to prepare for the legacy of the 2013 title in terms of the social, economic and cultural effects. We are therefore preparing for the next 20 years in Toulouse.  See you in 2027!