On World Bicycle Day, European Cycling Industries encourages Member States to implement cycling measures recommended by the European Commission’s Accelerate EU communication. Faced by rising fuel costs and volatile energy prices, cycling offers a proven, existing and low-cost option.
The recommendations include: “encouraging cycling and shared mobility solutions in urban and peri-urban areas can go through dedicated infrastructure such as safe pedestrian zones and bike lanes, and carsharing incentives such as reserved parking space and targeted subsidies for vulnerable users.”
European Cycling Industries highlights cycling as the most cost-effective and energy-efficient transport mode available today, offering an immediate and scalable way to reduce Europe’s dependence on imported fossil fuels in everyday mobility.
This was recognised by the recent European Commission Communication and Accelerate EU catalogue on recommended transport measures that strengthen Europe’s energy resilience. ECI is also advocating for fiscal incentives for company bike leasing as a powerful tool to enable access to bikes for Europeans.
Transport remains one of the EU’s most energy-intensive sectors and a structural driver of fossil fuel imports. Despite progress in electrification, the system remains heavily dependent on high energy inputs for short-distance mobility, particularly in urban and peri-urban car use.
This creates ongoing exposure to global fuel price volatility, with households and businesses directly affected through higher transport costs, reduced disposable income, and increased logistics costs across the economy.
48% of urban car journeys completed in the EU27 are under 5 km, a distance that can be efficiently covered by bicycle, including e-bikes and cargo bikes. Each shift to bicycle represents a direct and immediate reduction in energy demand, without reliance on fuel imports, electricity generation, or complex energy supply chains.
In the context of ongoing energy volatility, cycling is one of the fastest and most cost-effective ways to strengthen Europe’s energy resilience and help modal shift towards active mobility.
A recent European Parliament’s draft report on the Clean Corporate Vehicles Regulation now proposes allowing Member States to include e-bikes and cargo bikes in corporate clean fleet targets, recognising bicycles as part of the decarbonisation toolkit for company mobility alongside cars and vans.
To enable the rapid scaling of access to bicycles, company bike leasing is emerging as one of the fastest-growing enablers of cycling adoption. Through salary conversion and employer-supported schemes, employees across Europe could gain access to e-bikes at significantly reduced cost barriers with the right policy changes. In Germany alone, more than 2.1 million company bicycles were in use in 2024, demonstrating the scale and maturity of the model.
ECI encourages all Member States to implement the cycling measures recommended by the EU to ease energy dependency by relying on the low-cost, fast and proven solution offered by the bicycle.
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