Concluding remarks

by Francesco Pacifico, IRU Vice President and Chairman of the IRU Passenger Transport Council

Ladies and gentlemen, Dear Colleagues,

Allow me, on behalf of the IRU global membership and on your behalf, to express my sincere gratitude to our distinguished speakers and moderators, who were the genuine driving force of today’s extremely interesting and useful debate on the current challenges and future prospects for the bus and coach industry.

Today’s debate was a landmark event in many respects, since it allowed us for the first time to confront the opinions of leaders and experts with such different backgrounds and who, nevertheless, shared a deep respect and commitment to our profession, which, allow me to say that loudly, has a bright future in front of it.

It has a bright future not only because it is an incredibly flexible and innovative industry with a vital economic and social role, but also because:

1. we are the environmental champions among all transport modes,
2. we are among the safest transport modes,
3. we are ready and willing to improve, including through voluntary commitments.

These are essential qualities that are increasingly on demand in today’s market and society and which, as we have seen it in today’s debate, must be recognised by our politicians at local, national and EU level, in order to optimise the benefit for our customers-citizens through appropriate policy measures and incentives.

I take the opportunity of the presence of tourism and travel business leaders from Europe and America, the representatives of major tourist destinations, the distinguished members of the European Parliament and colleagues from the European Commission to launch an appeal for an enhanced (=renforcé) public-private partnership, in order for us to be able - collectively and in the public interest - to promote the choice of bus and coach as the preferred, indeed optimal choice for customers and society as a whole.

A year ago, we launched in the public space the idea of a travel platform and a travel policy, which would bring together our know-how, human and political resources into a common pool for joint reflexion, discussion and policy-making. We believe this is a very productive idea, which has still to find its own way both in the travel industry and in political circles.

We therefore would encourage our partners from the public and private sector to give it a serious thought, since it might become the vehicle for a joint effort to raise the political profile and efficiency of our actions.

From the bus and coach sector we certainly have a lot to offer to such a common pool, not least in terms of our long standing experience and practice of wide-scale voluntary commitments in sectors as different as safety, quality, training etc. These are initiatives which have the merit not only to exist, but also to improve public welfare, business conditions and, we believe, the profitability in our sector.

The social and market potential of such industry initiatives is however many times higher when private partners, such as the colleagues from UFTAA and ETOA, and public authorities, such as the European Commission, city authorities, like the city authorities of Venice and Dresden, join their forces in order to multiply - also in the benefit of their own constituencies - the economic and social benefits from our industry’s own initiatives in the field of safety, environmental protection and quality standards.

Looking at the wider picture, we do believe that the recognition, including political recognition, of the advantages collective bus and coach transport brings to society and its mobility should become a common political wisdom. We do also believe that this should be even more the case within the framework of major political initiatives of the European Union, such as the EU strategy for sustainable and profitable tourism, the EU Green Paper on urban transport and, importantly, the EU directives and regulations applicable to bus and coach.

As a matter of fact, we believe we are in our full right to expect that policy decision makers at EU level will take due account of our industry’s grievances regarding the abolition of the 12-day derogation for international coach tourism in the EU. Indeed, the launch of the Commission study on the role and place of coaches in today’s EU mobility, tourism and economy should be seen as the first step in the right direction, leading, hopefully, to a Commission proposal to restore this outstanding facility for our industry.

We do expect from our partners from city authorities in tourist destinations that, as a minimum, the industry will be consulted when important decisions affecting its functioning are taken and an appropriate and timely information is disseminated to all those affected, including to the representative trade associations, who are best placed to forward this information down to every single company and driver.

Indeed, as I said, we consider this as a minimum. We do believe that city authorities, their citizens and their traders, will all benefit from an intelligent and strategic commitment to promoting coach tourism, as demonstrated by the winners of the IRU City Trophy, such as Dresden in 2005 and Chester this year.

To conclude, allow me to say the following.

The IRU is strategically committed to partnership, as witnessed by our slogan “Working together for a better future”.

Today, we reaffirm our offer to all those – public and private partners -, who wish to work with us to further enhance our commitment to an increasingly safer, environmentally-friendly and higher quality services we want to deliver to both our customers and society as a whole.

Thank you very much for your attention.

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