Dear friends,

As you know, SKV initiated in 2015 a long-distance path called Via Carpatica that joins Serbia, Romania, Ukraine, Poland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Austria.

We then agreed, within the ERA, that this section should overlap with E3 and E8 as much as possible and only additionally to have a specific regional designation.

Meanwhile, the subject has a lot of interest and there is a risk that private initiatives, some purely commercial, will catch up with the idea and to appear all sorts of variations on this route.

The Sutenaible Development of The Carpathian is now the purpose of the Carpathian Convention. SKV is a member of Romania's team of The Carpathian Convention. I was surprised to find that hiking is poorly represented in the Carpathian Convention and there is a risk that many important decisions for the future will be taken without our consultation. That is why I invite you to join in this European authority in which we work together with other actors and promote joint initiatives like the Via Carpatica, who is the most recent. By default, we will handle better management of E3 and E8 routes, especially because the Carpathian Convention supports cross-border collaboration and provides funding.

I'm sending you a proposal-scheme as a basis for discussion to define the Via Carpathian route on two branches with different levels of difficulty.

In order to better coordinate our activity, we invite you in the next spring, from April to May, in Romania, at Brasov, at Postavaru chalet. The exact date will be agreed upon. A special invitation will be sent to the ERA management from which we request technical expertise.

We look forward to your response with interest, we hope positively.

Marcel Sofariu
President SKV