Irish Challenge Europe advocates and sisters, Julie and Irene McGee, attended the EU Consumer Summit which was held in Brussels on 18-19 March 2010. This, the largest consumer event of the European Commission, focused this year on services for consumers and in particular on access, fairness and choice. It brought together consumers, consumer advocates, and business and policy makers from across Europe to examine the issues and help produce real, actionable outcomes for future policy reflection.

Julie, a Year 2 climate advocate and her sister, Irene, an advocate from 2008-2009 participated in the workshop entitled 'Going Around in Circles - Sustainable Urban Mobility - A need for behavioural change'. As Challenge Europe advocates working on an electric vehicle project (‘Project Better Place‘) and a Belfast bicycle initiative (‘Promoting Urban Sustainability‘), both Irene and Julie were able to contribute fully to discussions and add a great deal of value and insight to the group. The purpose of this specific workshop was to provide feedback and ideas to the EU Commissioner for Health and Consumers, John Dalli, on how to help the transition to sustainable public transport. Both Julie and Irene felt that their group answered some key questions on barriers to using public transport, as well as suggestions on how to promote and encourage its use across Europe. The ideas produced were at a very strategic level, with lots of interaction and group-working and as a result, several specific ideas and case studies of good practice were provided during group presentations of key findings. An example of this was the use of more current marketing methods to communicate existing public transport networks and to make using public transport more 'trendy' than it is currently viewed. It was also suggested that the EU should focus more on advertising strategies for public transport.

Towards the end of the conference, the activity carried out by Julie, Irene and the rest of the Urban Mobility group was summarised and presented to all conference delegates and the EU Commissioner for further action after the Summit.

Both advocates found the Summit an interesting and worthwhile experience which allowed them to explore in-depth the subject of urban mobility with experts from various sectors across Europe. They came away with an increased knowledge of the issues, a greater confidence and valuable new networks, all of which will assist them with the continued development of their Challenge Europe projects back in Ireland and Northern Ireland.

Further information on the Summit may be found here.