Tuesday, 12th July 2011
East Dunbartonshire cycle co-op comes to Brussels
Speech of welcome from Struan Stevenson, MEP, The European Parliament, Tuesday 12th July 2011
It is my great privilege to welcome Mark Kiehmann and the East Dunbartonshire Cycle Co-operative to this special Working Breakfast in the European Parliament. I am also delighted that we have been joined by my good friends and colleagues Edvard Kožušnik MEP from the Czech Republic and Anna Rosbach MEP from Denmark.
Let me first of all say a word or two about Edvard Kožušnik before I invite him to address you? Edvard was a candidate for election to the European Parliament at the last elections in 2009. During the course of an interview with a newspaper journalist he rather imprudently promised that if he was successfully elected he would travel to his first session of the Parliament in Strasbourg by bike.
In fact he was successful and had to keep his promise, cycling all the way from Prague to Strasbourg and publishing a book of his adventures along the way. I thought you might be interested in hearing from him.
I first met Mark Kiehlmann on a cold Friday in late January at a seminar in Bishopbriggs Community Church. Mark had brought together MPs, MSPs and MEPs to hear teachers, pupils and cycle trainers talk about their efforts to encourage more people to cycle to school and to work and the great success of his co-operative in promoting cycling.
Mark's work not only involves training and encouraging young cyclists, but also training drivers to give children more room to ride on the road, as well as training cyclists in basic bike maintenance, first aid and other vital skills.
But he also likes to develop the fun side of cycling, famously entering trying to get into the Guinness Book of World Records by organising 2500 nursery, primary and secondary school pupils to simultaneously ring their bells to the tune of Blue Danube.
Mark told me that he was particularly interested in seeing at first hand how people living in Continental Europe achieve higher levels of cycling than we do in Scotland. So I was delighted to organise this visit to Brussels and to the European Parliament, so that he and his colleagues could see for themselves how things work in this city.
Indeed, when we finish breakfast, I want to cross to Place Luxembourg where there is one of many hundreds of city bike racks, where you can hire bicycles for very little money and use them to scoot around the city on special, safe bike paths. This is the ideal kind of low-carbon transport initiative that we should be pursuing in Scotland's cities.
As a keen cyclist myself - indeed I also had a great time cycling in the Czech Republic last year in Karlovy Vary - it is a sport and a means of transport that I am very happy to support.
STRUAN STEVENSON, MEP
