The Annual General Meeting of FEMA, the Federation of European Motorcyclists’ Associations, was held online, via Teams, on Saturday 12th February 2022.

The meeting was chaired by Anna Zee, FEMA President, also Director of Political and Technical services, of the BMF. The attendees, 25 from 16 National Motorcycle Organisations (NMO), both inside and outside of the EU, with proxies and apologies from a further 6 NMOs, approved the agenda:

A financial report from the Treasurer, BMF chair Jim Freeman, who reported that, despite an operating loss of 6,224 euros, against a projected loss of 14,243 forecast in the 2021 budget, the overall position was a solid foundation for 2022. The Committee voted to accept the financial operations of the Board, approving the usual disclaimer for the past year, 2021.

Elections were held for the Management Board; all the registered candidates were approved:
President: Anna Zee
Treasurer: Jim Freeman [BMF]
Board: Jesper Christensen [SMC]
Eric Maldiney [FFMC]
Steinmar Gunnarsson [BLS]
Lene Michelson [MCTC]

The 2022 budget proposal was presented, by Jim Freeman, as previously discussed at the October 2021 Committee meeting. The final proposal offered a ‘new normal’ costing and a ‘full lockdown’ option, both forecasting a loss for 2022, either of 2,000 or 1,000 euros respectively. The package was accepted by majority vote. The Treasurer pointed out that FEMA has had, of recent years, a track record of outperforming the Budget, which meant that with the reserves carried over from 2021, there was a cushion that could be relied on in 2022. The annual NMO fees increase, generally proposed in line with inflation, would be waived, because of the member’s widespread difficulties, after the second year of the pandemic.

There followed Secretariat reports from Dolf Willigers, General Secretary, and Wim Taal, Communications Officer.

Dolf Willigers reported that:

In general, operating conditions were currently still in ‘lockdown’ with meetings online, whether in Brussels or Geneva.
The ongoing de-carbonisation agenda had generated many meetings with different bodies, which revealed a surprising discrepancy of research and policy choices. Dolf is working on a webinar presentation about the energy transition, and the implications for motorcycling, details to be announced by FEMA. There followed a proposal, adopted by the meeting, to have a major policy discussion on decarbonisation at the FEMA Spring meeting.
There had been a number of meetings about road safety, including revision of the 3rd Driving Licence Directive [DLD], topside motorcycle protection for crash barriers, and other infrastructure matters in both Europe and the USA.
Ongoing ITS [Intelligent Transport Systems] meetings, including vehicle data ownership and data security.
FIM-FEMA co-operation, new position papers had been published, available on the website and here

Wim Taal reported that:

Facebook followers of FEMA had increased by 6,667 in the last year, to 47,132. The most online visitors to the FEMA website were from the UK, which also took second place on Facebook, for active followers.

The next FEMA Committee meeting will be hosted by MCTC, on 11th June 2022, as a hybrid meeting.

Report by Jim Freeman.

Top image courtesy of Wim Taal – FEMA