Founded 1998 Leader Anna Zee Type Charity | Location Brussels, Belgium Leader title President | |
Key people Dolf Willigers, General Secretary
Jim Freeman, Treasurer | ||
The Federation of European Motorcyclists' Associations (FEMA) is a motorcycling advocacy group based in Brussels, Belgium. It was formed on 10 January 1998 from a merger of the Federation of European Motorcyclists (FEM) and the European Motorcyclists' Association (EMA).
Contents
History
From its inception FEMA has been headquartered at Rue des Champs 62, 1040 Brussels, Belgium in the offices previously used by its forerunner FEM. FEMA's first General Secretary was Simon Milward who had previously served since 1992 as the General Secretary of the Federation of European Motorcyclists. The main driving force behind the amalgamation of FEM and EMA into FEMA was Neil Liversidge, the National Chairman (1989-2002) of the UK's Motorcycle Action Group, then known as MAG (UK) Ltd.
The merger created a pan-European riders' rights organisation ranging from Scandinavia in the north to Greece in the south and from Ireland in the west to the Czech republic in the east. It also brought together national organisations who continued to compete with each other for members within their own territories such as MAG (UK) and the British Motorcyclists Federation of the UK, and BVDM, Kuhle Wampe and Biker Union of Germany.
In 1999 the FEMA member groups met with other motorcyclists' organisations and motorcycle industry representatives from across the globe in Mulhouse, France. It was at this conference that Neil Liversidge also authored the 'Mulhouse Declaration', that -
'We the undersigned utterly oppose the compulsory fitment to privately owned vehicles of any device designed to arbitrarily remove control from the driver to remote operation. We note with extreme concern the tendency of governments to impose ever more intrusive and restrictive regulations upon the citizen. We caution governments to remember that they are permitted to govern only by the consent of the people and that such consent when given through an election does not grant unlimited licence to interfere in the daily life of the citizen. We further caution all governments that to impose unduly on popular freedom is to imperil the respect in which government and the rule of law is held.'The declaration received the unanimous support of the delegates present.
Founding members
Founding member organisations of FEMA were: