Bike Industry Participating in Global Lobby Platform

FRIEDRICHSHAFEN, Germany – The international bike industry has taken the first steps for its participation in the Global Alliance for EcoMobility. During the Eurobike Show a meeting was set up with industry leaders where they were briefed on the vision, goals and actions of this all important lobby platform that will have the status to partner with organizations like the United Nations, the World Bank and the World Health Organization for the promotion of bike use.

The initiators of the Global Alliance for EcoMobility - an organization called ICLEI and Shimano – organized the closed meeting at this year’s Eurobike Show. Present were Trek CEO John Burke; Giant CEO Tony Lo; Accell Group CEO and COLIBI Chairman René Takens; Shimano Chairman Yoshi Shimano; Shimano Vice President Corporate Communications Masahiro Tsuzaki; Chairman of the European Cyclists Federation Manfred Neun; Vuelta International CEO and COLIPED Chairman Moreno Fioravanti; Paul Lange GmbH CEO Bernhard Lange; ICLEI secretary-general Konrad Otto-Zimmermann and Shimano Europe Corporate Communications Director Hans Van Vliet. Bike Europe was the only media representative invited to this meeting.

Here Hans Van Vliet presented an outline on how Shimano and ICLEI came together and his goal to present bicycles as the urban mobility solution at the COP Conference for world leaders next December where a follow up on the Kyoto Protocol will be formulated. ICLEI secretary-general Konrad Otto-Zimmermann presented the scope of the new Global Alliance and the role the bike industry could play in it.

After these presentations Hans Van Vliet and Konrad Otto-Zimmermann, did not ask the industry leaders for an immediate response or an OK for taking the next steps in the set-up of the Global Alliance. But looking at the discussion during this meeting and what came about later on this topic at the Eurobike Show, it is clear that the international bike industry is ready to participate in the Alliance.

The discussion was on how the international bike industry could be represented in the Alliance and what next steps were to be taken to obtain the mandate from the entire industry and also to obtain the necessary funding.

Later at Eurobike COLIPED Chairman Moreno Fioravanti said on this: “In order to coordinate all the initiatives on the promotion of bicycle use, we are thinking of setting up a European Bicycle Promotion Council. This organisation should take part, next to councils from the US and Asia, in a Global Bicycle Promotion Council. The Chairman of the Global Council is to represent the bike sector in the Global Alliance for EcoMobility.”

Also at Eurobike there was talk on organizing a Congress for the founding of that European Bicycle Promotion Council; to discuss its mandate and on how the funding could be raised. When there’s more news on that, of course this trade journal will inform on it.