April 13, 2021 - Top industry leaders will take to the virtual stage next week, Thursday 22 April 3PM CEST, alongside senior EU officials to show the leading role of cycling businesses in European growth. Cycling Industries Europe’s 2021 Summit will show how cycling is driving European growth in COVID recovery, green jobs, new mobilities and digitalization.
In 2020 over 1000 people registered for the summit, so the CIE Summit has fast become one of the “don’t miss” diary dates in the business and political calendar.
Ton Anbeek of Accell Group, Tony Grimaldi of Cycleurope and Decathlon’s newly appointed global bicycle chief Irwin Wouts will be joined by bike sharing entrepreneur Erdem Ovacik from Donkey Republic in a CEO panel which will provide an overview of the major strategic opportunities and challenges in all areas of the industry in 2021. Current pressures on supply chains will be compared to the huge potential for growth in bike use, e-biking, bike share and sales in Europe.
Providing the context for the industry will be speeches from policy leaders who will show that cycling is ticking all the right boxes to be a major player in the reforms going through the EU to recover from the pandemic and support the EU Green Deal.
The Portuguese Government currently holds the Presidency of the European Council of Member States as well as being home to the fastest growth bicycle manufacturing sector in Europe, so the Portuguese Minister for Economy is ideally positioned to show that cycle growth is an environmental and industrial “win-win” for EU countries. The highly influential Wuppertal Institute has recently published a report showing that cycling has greater job creation potential in Germany than the car industry, so Professor Manfred Fischedick, Scientific Managing Director of the institute will be sharing the key messages from his research which complement the Portuguese success story.
Frans Timmermans, Executive Vice President of the EU Commission has emerged as cycling’s leading political champion in the EU institutions. The EU will be signing off billions of Euros of aid for national governments Recovery and Resilience plans in the next few weeks, so Timmermans is being invited to give an overview of how the plans are looking for cycling. According to EU insiders “cycling is going to be pleased.”
In the EU Growth panel other industry leaders and innovators will identify some of the critical trends that will be powering the cycling sector towards the ambitious growth forecasts published by CIE. Digitalization, leasing, logistics, sharing and market intelligence are all emerging markets that extend the reach of cycling and cycling services to new customers.
Register for the CIE Summit here.
Read the draft programme here.
