More than 300 delegates from 70 clubs in 51 countries attended the four-day conference in Cologne. The annual forum brings together representatives of national automobile clubs from all over the world to discuss mobility issues such as consumer protection and road safety.

Meyer was delighted at the progress made in these and other areas of mobility. He said: “The public policy and consumer protection efforts of the FIA clubs do not stop at our national borders. In coordinating our positions and exchanging experiences, we have made another step towards more road safety and better consumer protection in Europe. To me this is a great success.”

The aim of Conference Week is to bring together the representatives of the automobile clubs to exchange experiences and agree on future projects. Meyer was particularly pleased that the delegates heavily supported the world-wide ‘Make Roads Safe’ campaign, which is backed by the FIA Foundation.

Major inroads were also made in various consumer protection issues in Europe, such as the legal protection of children in road traffic. The conference hosted numerous commissions, which met to discuss contemporary automotive issues such as legal and consumer topics, road service technologies, travel and tourism products, marketing techniques, and a range of cooperative activities.

Meyer said that this year’s highlights included the global road safety campaign and the enhanced communication between the automobile clubs. He also commended the meeting between the editors of the club magazines. Meyer commented: “The meeting of the Chief Editors from 17 countries that followed the Conference Week was yet another highlight. It was unique in that it also demonstrated the joint clout of the European club magazines.”

In future years, Meyer would like to see even more cooperation between the clubs to push forward the goals of Conference Week throughout the rest of the year. He said: “On important consumer protection and public policy issues, the clubs should emphasise cooperation even more. We need to increase the professionalism and the effectiveness of the instruments with which we mean to attain our goals in these areas in order to achieve even more impact.”

Even so, he believes that major progress was made at this year’s event, a fact borne out by the positive feedback from the delegates. As Meyer put it: “We had a lot of positive feedback. Germany and Cologne were already under the spell of the FIFA World Cup and obviously we were quite successful in appropriating the spirit of its motto ‘A time to make friends’.”