European cultural routes and sustainability: From policy frames to measurable practice

Abstract

This article examines how the European Cultural Routes programme articulates and implements sustainability. Secondary documents (2010–2025) are analysed using critical discourse analysis with a policy-instrumentation lens to follow how narratives travel into tools and routines. Four recurrent strategies are identified: intertextual alignment with global norms, the moral economy of slow mobility, community co‑creation, and best‑practice evidencing. The study proposes a discourse–instrument–practice framework and a coding ladder that distinguishes vision, action and public reporting. Findings indicate uneven translation from rhetoric to enforceable instruments and monitoring, with stronger performance where certification and funding conditionalities render tools non‑optional. The analysis extends sustainable tourism by linking critical discourse analysis with policy instrumentation, while specifying enforceable instruments and transparent reporting to make sustainability claims auditable and governable.