Ireland’s ITF Presidency
Ireland, through the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport, has assumed the 2019/20 Presidency of the International Transport Forum (ITF). This has marked a full circle moment after creation of the ITF by the 2006 Dublin Declaration.
The Presidency of the ITF revolves annually among member countries; Ireland taking up the role in 2019/20 means that the country has chaired the Council of Ministers of Transport and the Transport Management Board meetings that have taken place so far during its yearlong tenure and will also play a key role in the organisation of the ITF’s Annual Summit, which had been due to take place in late May in Leipzig, Germany but was postponed in light of the Covid-19 pandemic.
In a statement confirming the postponement of the Summit, ITF Secretary General Young Tae Kim said that the decision had been taken through consultation with the member countries, led by Ireland. A new date for the Summit has not yet been set and the likelihood of Ireland getting to stage the Summit that it will have played a key role in organising during its presidency does seem to be under threat.
The concentration of ITF meetings in Dublin began in November 2019 as Ireland officially took up the mantle of the presidency. Transport Research Committee meetings, Task Force 2020 meetings and the first meeting of Task Force 2021 were all held at that time among other committee meetings.
Ireland had previously held the presidency of the European Conference of Ministers of Transport (ECMT), from which the ITF was established. The ITF’s founding, which made the ECMT a worldwide organisation by making full-time members of previous associate members such as Japan and the United States, was done through the 2006 Declaration on the Development of the ECMT, colloquially known as the Dublin Declaration.
Further non-European countries have joined since, such as China, the United Arab Emirates and Morocco, who are serving as one of Ireland’s vice presidents, along with the United Kingdom. The ITF currently consists of 60 member countries, with one of the most notable stories of Ireland’s presidency so far being the approval of Brazil’s application to become an observer country within the forum. Upon their ascension to observer membership, Secretary General Kim said that the ITF were “keen to learn from the country that gave the world one of the great transport innovations of recent decades: Bus Rapid Transit”.
Other notable actions have included the publication of reports such as the Corporate Partnership Board’s Safe Micromobility report that found e-scooters to be safer than cars and motorcycles – a finding that will be welcomed by the new Irish Government given the Programme for Government’s commitment to the provision of e-scooters – along with the release of the Transport Climate Action Directory, an online database of more than 60 climate change mitigation measures for transport and the evidence base needed to gauge their effectiveness. The database is now available for public use and is specifically aimed at supporting countries in the first revisions of their nationally determined contributions for the 2021 Conference of Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
