The European Road Safety Charter was present with an exclusive stand at the Fourth Ministerial Conference of Ministers of Transport of the European Union, 3-4 November 2006. The conference had the participation of around 30 transport ministers from all over Europe, and even some from countries outside EU like Brazil, the United States and India. The conference was held in the inner part of the beautiful medieval Castelvecchio Palace in Verona.
The theme of the conference was “Innovative Approaches to Road Safety”, discussing new initiatives and ideas of road safety with a special focus on the vulnerable user groups such as children and seniors. There were four working sessions for the ministers and national delegations; “Children’s Mobility and Road Safety Awareness”, “Safety of two-wheel vehicle users”, “Road Safety Planning and Policies” and “Innovations in Road Safety including Technologies”. These themes covered a broad spectrum of the problem areas related to road safety.
The ERSCharter initiative was shown in a stand together with commitment actions from FIA (Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile), ACEM (Association des Constructeurs Européens de Motocycles) and POLIS (network of European cities and regions, promoting innovation in local transport). The tree organizations are long standing supporters of the ERSCharter and were working to inform more entities about the ERSCharter initiative.

From left to right Stine Jensen from the European Road Safety Charter, Oliver Lenz from FIA, Antonio Perlot from ACEM and Oliver Jung from POLIS.

At the stand many ministers and other members of the national delegations were informed about the European initiative and together with the stand representatives discussing possible ways of highlighting the ERSCharter in their countries or amongst their contacts in the national road safety councils or in the work of the ministries themselves.

Mr. Jacques Barrot, Vice-President of the European Commission in charge of Transport, with some of the representatives of FIA, ACEM and POLIS.

The conference itself was celebrating a new initiative in innovative ways of combating the high number of children’s causalities, the “Children’s Mobility and Road Safety Awareness Pilot Action 1”. The pilot action had had the form of a competition where cities and local regions across Europe had signed up through the ERSCharter website with their initiatives in better children mobility. Representatives from several cities were at the meeting, presenting their actions.
Since the quality of the initiatives from the cities was so high, the jury decided to share the Award amongst 3 cities: The City of Verona (Italy), The Province of Noord-Brabant (The Netherlands) and The City of Reggio Emilia (Italy).
The tree cities are all currently defining their commitments for the ERSCharter.
The last day of the conference also saw a new major signatory of the European Road Safety Charter. ACEA, the European Automobile Manufacturers Association, represents the 13 major European car, truck and bus manufacturers in the EU, signed their commitment to improve road safety in EU. They committed to work in a constructive manner with the European Commission and other stakeholders on an integrated approach to road safety, as agreed in the CARS 21 report. Also, to equip progressively passenger cars of categories M1 and category N3 with seatbelt warning for the driver’s seat, and also to continue to equip progressively integral/single build coaches defined as M3 class III vehicles with electronically controlled stabilising systems.
The diploma of the commitment was signed during the press conference and was overseen and congratulated by Mr. Jacques Barrot, Vice-President of the European Commission in charge of Transport.
The Ministerial conference was a great possibility for the European Road Safety Charter to be visible on a European level and to remind the ministers of the importance of further national implementation of the project to have more stakeholders across Europe signing up with their individual commitments.
Resources:

Verona Competition