1141 AN ASSESSMENT OF THE RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN THE CULTURAL HERITAGE, TRAVEL AND TOURISM, AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT IN THE CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPEAN COUNTRIES Dugulan Diana Academy of Economic Studies in Bucharest Popescu Ioana Cecilia Academy of Economic Studies in Bucharest Vegheş Călin Academy of Economic Studies in Bucharest The cultural heritage, including, according to the UNESCO definition, the assembly of monuments, groups of buildings, and sites which are of outstanding universal value from the historical, aesthetic, ethnological or anthropological point of view, represents an important asset that can be engaged and capitalized in order to support the sustainable development. Meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of the future generations to meet their own needs in order to provide a better quality of life for everyone, now and for generations to come, has become a concern and, in the same time, a priority for all the stakeholders of the society. Turning to the best account of the cultural heritage also represents an important driver for the sustainable development of the travel and tourism industry, as the cultural sites, institutions, goods and services, appropriately capitalized, represent significant attractions for the international and domestic tourists. The integration of the principles of sustainable development in the current functioning of the travel and tourism industry led to the development and implementation of the concept of sustainable tourism. The paper explores in a distinctive manner the relationships between the cultural heritage and the travel and tourism industry, respectively the cultural heritage and the sustainable development based on a set of related statistical indicators, and the specific secondary data, expressing the extent of the cultural heritage, the development of the travel and tourism industry, and the attained level of sustainable development in ten Central and Eastern European countries, members of the European Union. There are two major research questions the paper aims to answer: (1) How significant is the relationship between the cultural heritage and the development of the travel and tourism industry? (2) Is there a noteworthy connection between the cultural heritage and the sustainable development in the selected countries? Keywords: cultural heritage, travel and tourism, sustainable development, Central and Eastern Europe JEL classification: M83, M31 Introduction The cultural heritage, is defined by UNESCO as an assembly of monuments (including architectural works, works of monumental sculpture and painting, elements or structures of an architectural nature, inscriptions, cave dwellings and combination of features), groups of buildings (groups of separate or connected buildings which, because of their architecture, their homogeneity or their place in the landscape, are of outstanding universal value from the point of view of history, art or science), and sites (works of man or the combined works of nature and man, and areas including archaeological sites) which are of outstanding universal value from the historical, aesthetic, ethnological or anthropological point of view (UNESCO, 1972).