The 4th edition of the European Youth Forum for Road Safety has seen some momentous actions taking place that are set to pave the path ahead for sustainable road safety action in Europe over the next decade with clear focus on road safety for young people. The key highlights and learning points from the forum were set around the new policy orientations of the European Union presented by Isabelle Kardacz, Head of the Road Safety Unit of the DG Move at the European Commission. Her presentation described strategy and actions for the coming decade 2011-2020. Mrs Kardacz expressed, "This youth forum is an important element for reducing the amount of young people being killed on Europe´s roads, you need to go away from this forum as you did last year and implement actions.” Mrs Kardacz also invited young people to ´give their input to the EU policy orientations´ and wished for the creation of a ´think tank´ to actively influence road safety at the highest level of decision making in Europe.

One of the most momentous actions that has taken place comes in the form of the European Youth Declaration for Road Safety:

This Youth Declaration was adopted and officially launched by its first diffusion, which was personally delivered to M. Fatos Karomitsos, Director of the Directorate General of Mobility and Transport, at the European Commission.

Please download the EU Youth Declaration on the following link for further massive use and diffusion: European Youth Declaration for Road Safety (This official document will be soon available in 21 languages on this website.)

In other news, there were presentations of new road safety tools, statistics and research related to youth and road safety issues. The 2nd day was significantly orientated around evaluation, education and on putting the priority on 'life long education' for young people to change mentalities with regards to their attitude and therefore behaviour for road safety.

Also, very exciting news was shared by the European Commission in which the launch of the new 'Going Abroad App' for road safety rules on Europe's roads was shared with the delegates. As well as this, the European Commission revealed that they will be running a youth and road safety Facebook campaign towards the end of the year. More details will be shared in due course.

The final presentations were well received by the delegates of the forum, with the conclusions of Axel Druart, MC of the Forum 2011. An official report on the two days will be soon available, In total there were 65 participants attending including 52 official young delegates from 27 EU member states.

The conference ends with the message, 'Together we can make our European roads safe' said in more than 23 languages by the youth delegates. (Please see video on the right side of this page)

The final word went to Isabelle Kardacz Director of DG MOVE. She told delegates, 'To work together, give the European Commission your valuable input and work hard to implement road safety in Europe'. It has been an intensive but fruitful Forum.

You can follow the debate on Twitter by searching the hashtag #EYFRS or on Facebook and let us know what you think!