BTMA Elected To Represent National Associations At Tyres Europe Board Meetings

The British Tyre Manufacturers’ Association (BTMA) has been elected to represent nine national tyre associations at meetings of the Tyres Europe Board of Directors, giving the newly established National Associations Leadership Council a route into Board-level discussions during its first year.

The election took place at the inaugural meeting of the National Associations Leadership Council, a new structure bringing together tyre associations from the UK, Spain, Italy, France, Poland, Hungary, Czechia, Slovakia and the Netherlands.

BTMA will hold the representative role for a one-year mandate. Its chief executive, Darren Lindsey, will attend meetings of the Tyres Europe Board of Directors on behalf of the participating national associations, conveying shared priorities and reporting relevant outcomes back to them.

BTMA describes the arrangement as providing Europe’s national tyre associations with a formal, collective voice at Tyres Europe Board level for the first time. Importantly, the appointment does not mean BTMA has joined the Board, nor is Lindsey’s role simply to advocate the UK position.

“Our job over the next year is a simple one to describe and a demanding one to do well: to make sure the Board hears not just the UK view, but the common thread running through nine national markets and to bring back what we learn so that every association benefits,” Lindsey said.

The structure is intended to work in both directions. National associations can bring market-level perspectives into European industry discussions, while information from those discussions can be reported back through the Council.

For BTMA members, the association says this should provide earlier and more detailed visibility of European discussions than relying solely on published outputs. It also creates a route through which UK concerns can be raised alongside those emerging from other national markets.

BTMA identifies trade, enforcement, end-of-life tyres and product regulation as examples of areas where UK concerns could be raised through the structure. These have not been presented as an agreed policy agenda for all nine participating associations.

The new mechanism follows other moves to strengthen links between Tyres Europe and national industry bodies. Earlier this month, the organisation signed cooperation agreements bringing the Italian, Spanish and French national tyre and rubber associations into Tyres Europe as Association Members.

Tyres Europe chief executive Adam McCarthy said the Council was intended to support a “mutually beneficial exchange of information”, allowing national insights to inform discussions at European level while giving national associations greater visibility of developments affecting the industry.

The immediate change is therefore one of representation and information flow rather than policy. National associations now have a defined collective route into Tyres Europe Board meetings, with BTMA elected to operate that route for its first year.

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Tags: BTMA, Tyres Europe, Darren Lindsey, Adam McCarthy, national tyre associations, European tyre industry, tyre regulation, tyre manufacturing, National Associations Leadership Council, tyre industry representation

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