Towards a European Roadmap for Cycling?

The meeting shed a light on the current European policy context across sectors, i.e. transport, environment, health, sports, tourism, regional and urban development, jobs creation and growth, and highlighted the dimension of cycling in addressing a number of challanges at European and global level, including on climate change, air pollution, enhancing physical activity, decarbonasing urban road transport and reducing fuel dependency, and contributing to modal shift in passanger and freight transport.

A breakout session followed. Stakeholders were divided into five smaller groups and invited to share knowledge in their field of expertise with the aim to identify key themes and inform the EU Roadmap for Cycling process.

In the wake of our network's strong committment to bridge the gap between the transport and health sector, Polis Secretary General Karen Vancluysen, Florinda Boschetti coordinator of Polis Environment and Health in Transport pillar, and city of Budapest (BKK) were invited to attended the meeting and contribute to the stakeholder dialogue.

It was a very good feeling sittting in a fully packed meeting room with 50 enthusiastic people representing different institutions and organisations, all vividly contributing ideas and thoughts to the discussion how best cycling could be included in mainstream EU policies.

ECF's proposal for a EU Roadmap for Cycling is inspired by the Paris Declaration adopted by the Transport, Health, Environment Pan-European Programme (THE PEP) in April 2014 which set out a clear mandate todevelop a pan-European Master Plan for Cycling Promotion.

We are looking forward to the next steps and will share any latest development within the Working Group on Health and Transport!

For more information on A European Roadmap for cycling – ECF proposal, please visit: http://www.ecf.com/wp-content/uploads/150429_An-EU-roadmap-for-cycling_ECF-proposal.pdf

Contact: Florinda Boschetti, fboschetti@polisnetwork.eu