Activities marking European Mobility Week in Bosnia and Herzegovina started with an EU team participating in this year’s Sarajevo Half-Marathon and the organisation of the Tuzla Cycling Promenade. Sarajevo Half-Marathon brought together some 3,000 participants from 45 countries. The Deputy Head of the EU Delegation to BiH, Khaldoun Sinno, together with representatives of EU embassies in BiH and recreational runners formed the EU team, which raised awareness of sustainable urban mobility. By promoting sustainable ways of transport, the European Union is sharing a common goal and a common identity with other towns and cities throughout the world.

While Sarajevo celebrated running, 4,000 cyclists took part in the largest recreational cycling event in Bosnia and Herzegovina – the 7th Tuzla Cycling Promenade. “Today’s event helps us to contribute to draw attention to highly important issues such as environment protection and negative health consequences due to overuse of cars, which contributes to increased air pollution and traffic accidents. Let’s bear in mind that these problems could be reduced by switching to other transport modes,” said Gianluca Vannini, Acting Head of Operation Sections for Social Development, Civil Society and Cross Border Cooperation of the EU Delegation to BiH who presented awards to the luckiest participants of the cycling promenade.

European Mobility Week takes place every year from 16 to 22 September, with more than 2,000 cities and over 40 countries participating. Since its launch in 2002, the campaign has steadily grown and in 2017 the campaign broke its own record with 2,526 town and cities from 50 countries taking part in the activities. The aim of EMW is to encourage European cities to introduce and promote sustainable transport means and to invite people to try out alternatives to car use.

This year, the theme of European Mobility Week is Multimodality – promoting the use of different modes of transport within one or several journeys, with the slogan, Mix and move! This year’s European Mobility Week encourages the use of different modes of urban transport. Accepting the concept of multimodality enables a different perspective on urban transportation and the readiness to use new forms of mobility, which creates a positive effect on the environment.

During European Mobility Week, the EU Info Centre will also support the organisation of the Banja Luka cycling tour, in cooperation with European Mobility Week National coordinator for BiH, in order to mark the end of European Mobility Week and Car Free Day on 22 September.