FIA President Mohammed Ben Sulayem started the meeting by reviewing the advancements of the past months in the field of road safety and sustainable mobility as well as in Membership Services, with development of the FIA-led One Road Programme, and tourism, with breaking record CPD sales in 2023. “Many things have happened since we last met in June in Cordoba and they have contributed to advancing our transformation agenda and our goal to be the global voice of mobility,” he said. 

He particularly highlighted the success of the two last Mobility regional events, the joint Sport and Mobility FIA American Congress hosted by the Automóvil Club Guatemala in August, and the FIA Region II Roundtable hosted by Ikatan Motor Indonesia in September, that fostered learning and experience sharing among FIA Mobility Members of Region II, III and IV. 

“With these events, we are truly empowering the Regions, strengthening the network at the regional level, and putting knowledge and exchange at the heart of everything we do,” he commented.

FIA Deputy President for Automobile Mobility and Tourism Tim Shearman also insisted on the importance of strengthening the community and noted: “For the first time we have had significant inter-regional participation and it’s a great template going forward to have this cross regional representation that really help share best practices and successes that are happening around our entire family.”

The agenda then focused on the progress report on the 2023 Action Plan of the Mobility Advocacy Strategy.  In the field of road safety, the first two-day Delft Road Safety Course was organised in Bali following the FIA Region II Roundtable and enabled to strengthen Club’s capacity in building road safety advocacy projects. Development of the FIA Road Safety Index, enabling organisations and companies to measure their safety footprint, also successfully continued at a time when the international road safety community is increasingly calling for road safety to be included in sustainability reporting. In sustainable mobility, discussions focused on the projects of research that the FIA Mobility Division aims to conduct to help FIA Members navigate the landscape of clean mobility solutions and to contribute to building a knowledge-led federation. 

Learning opportunities were also highlighted during the meeting with an update on the FIA University programmes offering exceptional opportunities for Members to develop their skills, learn from each other and benefit from the expertise of the faculty of the world’s top business schools. 

Finally, World Council members also heard about the conclusions of the last meeting of the FIA Statutes Review Commission and the proposals submitted by the FIA Members to further modernise the statutes of the Federation in alignment with the FIA Senior Leadership team commitment to ensure the FIA is a Member-Driven Federation.