IRU’s General Assembly has unanimously re-elected Radu Dinescu as President for the coming three years, from 2022 to 2024, along with a new Presidential Executive, IRU’s governing board.
The elections were the climax of four days of member meetings this week, held in a hybrid format in Geneva and virtually.
The Presidents of the Goods and Passenger Transport Councils, Asli Çalik and Patrick Westelinck respectively, who also serve as IRU Vice Presidents, were also re-elected. Working programmes for 2022 were adopted, as were three amendments to the IRU Constitution.
The General Assembly, transport councils and other statutory meetings also addressed a wide range of industry issues and opportunities, including COVID recovery, decarbonisation, digitalisation, mobility, and trade and border issues.
A particular focus in both transport councils was on IRU’s Green Compact, discussing and confirming next steps, particularly in defining the best regional approaches for each of the five pillars. Individual implementation plans for each pillar were presented, with all being adopted by both councils.
The Goods Transport Council had a lively panel debate on decarbonisation with the Presidents of IRU members AISÖ, ATA, and CRTA on CO2 pricing and taxation approaches in Austria and the EU, the US and China respectively.
The Council also unanimously passed an emergency resolution on the global supply chain crisis and passed a new position on the use of navigation seals for international goods transport.
The Passenger Transport Council debated other key issues, notably the state of the industry globally following the pandemic and MaaS (Mobility as a Service) platforms.
The next Council meetings and General Assembly will be in May 2022.
As of 1 January 2022, IRUs new leadership will be:
President
- Radu Dinescu, UNTRR, Romania
Vice Presidents
- Asli Çalik, TOBB, Turkey
- Patrick Westelinck, FBAA, Belgium
Other Presidential Executive members
- Jan Buczek, ZMPD, Poland
- Vojtech Hromir, Česmad Bohemia, Czech Republic
- Andrey Kurushin, ASMAP, Russia
- Michael Oppermann, Deutscher Taxi- und Mietwagenverband, Germany
- Erik Østergaard, DTL, Denmark
- Joost Sitskoorn, Evofenedex, Netherlands
- Ramon Valdivia, ASTIC, Spain
Along with the Presidents of the two transport councils, their other board members were also re-elected:
Goods Transport Council
- Asli Çalik, TOBB, Turkey
- Iro Doumani, OFAE, Greece
- Ursula Nies, BGL, Germany
Passenger Transport Council
- Patrick Westelinck, FBAA, Belgium
- Anna Grønlund, Sveriges Bussföretag, Sweden
- Michael Nielsen, DPT, Denmark