Together with Romanian president Traian Basescu, Bulgarian President Georgi Purvanov will open the Europalia festival on October 3 2007 in Brussels.

Europalia 2007 would be devoted to the culture of the 27 European Union member states, highlighting common European roots that long predate the EU project, a festival press statement said. The biennial cultural festival, which usually celebrates a single country's heritage, would coincide with the 50th anniversary of the Treaties of Rome that laid the foundations of the EU.

Even though Belgium is the official host of the festival, the honour of opening the festival would be for the newest members of the European Union, Bulgarian National Radio (BNR) reported.

The official openings concert of the festival would be a performance by the mixed choir of Bulgarian National Radio together with the Bucharest Philharmonic orchestra, BNR said.

The festival would include performances by children from the National School for Dance Arts in Sofia, Bulgarian musician Teodosii Spasov and Bulgarian pianist and the piano 2007 second prize winner of the Queen Elisabeth International Music Competition of Belgium, Plamena Mangova.

Bulgarian cinema would be shown in a panorama programme, BNR said.