Dear Esteemed and Honored Guests, Authorities, as President of ELA – the European Lift Association – I would like to thank the opportunity to be here with you to celebrate our strong support to Interlift being the main exhibition in Europe and a place where innovation and culture is exchanged.

Also, I am glad to having been made aware that a lot of exhibitors are coming from outside of Europe – this favors an open cultural exchange via the vast number of speeches at the Forum and by all of the company’s business interactions.

Our Association Continental presence is strengthened by the number of Lifts in operation which equals to approx. 6.5 Million on roughly 16 Million Lifts installed Worldwide and with new escalators and elevators at approx. 150k units yearly.

On this latter point, it has to be said that in Europe we have no common set of regulations or standards describing how to handle existing lifts in terms of Maintenance, repair or even modernization and this is a topic where we, at ELA, keep a strong focus within our Committees and Working Groups.

Also, in new and modernized buildings which are becoming increasingly complex and in which different technologies integrate and communicate with each other, Lifts and Escalators have the function of properly interacting and connecting both with the building occupants and with the entire infrastructure. Also on this topic we have a lot of experts who are currently dealing with Cybersecurity and Digitalization matters.

Europe is the place where only 7% of the Global population resides but is currently the most innovative place and where technical rules are the most advanced. Our CEN rules are accepted by 80% of the Global Nations and these are promoting our European model through the World.

20% of the Global R&D is spent by Europe as well as 1/3 of the total Global Scientific publications of High Quality comes from Europe.

As Cities change shape, our industry urges to make sure that Standards are readily available and fairly applied through all of the European member states and to this we, the European Lift Association, are happy to confirm our commitments towards the industry via constructive talks with the EU Commission and with all of the other industry stakeholders like NB-L, CEN, ISO and EFESME at continental and with the Chinese and American associations at intercontinental levels.

I very much welcome this cooperation with Interlift to ensure that there will be no technical barriers holding innovation for the development of our important sector and to the benefit of consumers, the industry and for a sustainable development.

We move approximately 2 Billion people daily on around the world and have the commitment to do it safely while facilitating technological innovation and the free movement of goods Worldwide.

Thanks for your attention!