More than 20 experts from different organisations involved in the EU Cycling Strategy Campaign gathered for the 1st time on 25 November in order to develop a blueprint document for a future EU Cycling Strategy. This Expert Group meeting was the first in a series of 4 meetings in total, building in itself on a considerable number of prior public events, workshops and a think tank meeting that were organized over the past 18 months. The blueprint document is said to identify key policy actions at EU level and will be handed over to Transport Commissioner Violeta Bulc at the Velo-city conference 2017 in Arnhem-Nijmegen.

Who is involved?

Under the initiative from the ECF, the expert group includes European interest group representations such as POLIS, the European Transport Safety Council, the European Public Health Alliance, Green Budget Europe and CONEBI. National voices include the national bicycle officers from Luxembourg and Hungary, the Danish Cycling Embassy and CROW from the Netherlands. Other stakeholders include from Transport for London, the German Society for International Cooperation (GIZ), the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI), the Catholic University of Leuven, Austria’s Verracon, and last but not least, the Cycling Contact Person from the Commission’s Directorate-General for Mobility and Transport (DG MOVE) in observer status.

The blueprint document

The experts discussed the overall policy objectives, the 11 draft chapters and here the first set of policy recommendations, backed up by the European Committee’s of the Regions report and the results of a public survey on this issue. Experts agreed that the time horizon of the EU Cycling Strategy shall be until 2030.

Coming up

Over the next 3 months, these policy recommendations will be further developed before a draft version will be put online in March 2017, open to comments from the community. The benefits part of the blueprint document will be presented as early as next week on December 6 in a public event: “The socio-economic benefits of cycling: Measure what you value”.

Participants finished the meeting with a positive note by affirming their optimism and strong commitment towards the development of an EU Cycling Strategy. The call for such a strategy already finds the support of more than 60 partners from European organisations, local, regional and national authorities, businesses and academia, and many more individuals. You can support it too.