For 35 years, collaboration has been at the heart of ERTICO – ITS Europe. Since its creation in 1991, ERTICO has brought together organisations from across the mobility ecosystem around a shared ambition: to advance intelligent transport solutions that make mobility safer, smarter, cleaner and more efficient.
Technologies have evolved, new mobility players have emerged, and Europe's transport priorities have changed significantly over these three and a half decades. Yet one element has remained constant: the strength of the ERTICO Partnership and its ability to connect different perspectives, expertise and sectors to turn innovation into action.
As ERTICO celebrates its 35th anniversary, it is an opportunity not only to look back at how the Partnership has evolved, but also to consider the role this unique collaborative ecosystem will play in shaping the next generation of European mobility.
A Partnership Built Around Its Members
The ERTICO Partnership is much more than a network of organisations. It is a collaborative community in which Partners actively contribute to ERTICO's direction, activities and priorities.
At the centre of this approach is ERTICO's Partners First philosophy. It reflects a simple principle: the Partnership exists because of its members, and their expertise, priorities and ambitions should remain at the heart of what ERTICO does.
Partners bring different perspectives from across the mobility value chain. By connecting these perspectives, ERTICO creates an environment where common challenges can be identified, ideas can be exchanged and new opportunities for collaboration can emerge.
This approach has been central to ERTICO's mission throughout its history. It enables the organisation to remain closely connected to the realities of the mobility sector while providing Partners with a platform to engage beyond their individual organisations and sectors.
From Vision to Ecosystem
The ERTICO Partnership has evolved considerably since its beginnings. What started with a group of 15 founding stakeholders committed to advancing Intelligent Transport Systems has developed into a diverse European ecosystem of more than 120 organisations.
Today, the Partnership brings together stakeholders across eight sectors of the mobility ecosystem, creating connections between organisations that might otherwise operate in separate environments.
This diversity is one of ERTICO's greatest strengths. Mobility challenges rarely belong to a single sector. Delivering connected, automated, sustainable or data-driven transport requires cooperation between those who build infrastructure, develop technologies, operate transport services, conduct research, create policy and ultimately use mobility solutions.
By bringing these perspectives together, the Partnership provides a space where different priorities can meet and where solutions can be considered from across the entire mobility value chain.
Expanding the Mobility Horizon
The mobility landscape of 2026 looks very different from that of 1991, and the ERTICO Partnership has evolved alongside it.
While traditional Intelligent Transport Systems remain at its core, the ecosystem around ITS has expanded dramatically. Digitalisation and connectivity have brought telecommunications and IT companies closer to transport. Electrification has created new links between mobility and energy. The growing importance of data has introduced new questions around interoperability, data spaces, governance and digital infrastructure.
At the same time, areas such as parking, urban logistics and emerging forms of mobility, including air mobility, increasingly form part of a broader conversation about how people and goods will move in the future.
The composition and activities of the ERTICO Partnership reflect this transformation. By welcoming expertise from emerging areas while maintaining strong connections with established mobility sectors, the Partnership continues to broaden the conversation around intelligent transport.
This ability to evolve is essential. As technologies and markets converge, the future of mobility will increasingly depend on collaboration beyond traditional sector boundaries.
Partners as Drivers of Change
ERTICO Partners do not simply observe changes in the mobility landscape. They help identify what comes next.
Through continuous engagement with the Partnership, organisations can bring forward emerging challenges, technological developments, market needs and policy priorities. These exchanges help ERTICO understand where collective action can create the greatest value and where new initiatives may be needed.
This creates a two-way relationship. ERTICO provides the framework and connections that enable collaboration, while Partners contribute the knowledge and expertise that shape its direction.
Ideas can develop into discussions, discussions into collaborative activities, and collaborative activities into projects, platforms and deployment opportunities.
In this way, the Partnership helps move the mobility conversation from reacting to change towards anticipating and influencing it.
Creating Spaces for Collaboration
Collaboration requires more than bringing organisations into the same network. It requires spaces where people can meet, exchange knowledge, challenge assumptions and develop ideas together.
Over the years, ERTICO has created a range of formats to enable these exchanges.
Sector and cross-sector meetings allow Partners to discuss priorities from both specialised and multidisciplinary perspectives. Think Tanks and Focus On events provide opportunities to explore important topics in greater depth, bringing together expertise around emerging technologies, policy developments and mobility challenges.
Activity Development Days create a dedicated environment for Partners to identify common interests and explore potential activities and project ideas. Meanwhile, the Annual Partnership Forum brings the wider community together to exchange perspectives, strengthen relationships and discuss the strategic direction of ERTICO and the mobility ecosystem.
Each format serves a different purpose, but together they create an ongoing dialogue across the Partnership. This structured exchange helps transform individual expertise into shared knowledge and, ultimately, into concrete action.
The Strength of the Public-Private Model
One of the defining characteristics of ERTICO is its multi-stakeholder, public-private model.
Mobility is an interconnected system. Public authorities establish policy and manage infrastructure. Industry develops vehicles, technologies and services. Research organisations provide knowledge and new approaches. Service providers translate innovation into solutions for users. Other actors contribute specialised expertise needed to make the overall system work.
No single stakeholder can deliver the mobility transformation alone.
ERTICO provides a neutral environment where these different actors can work together, understand each other's priorities and build common approaches. This is particularly important when moving from innovation to large-scale deployment, where technical solutions must interact with infrastructure, regulation, business models and user expectations.
By facilitating dialogue across the mobility value chain, the Partnership helps build the consensus and cooperation required to advance coordinated European mobility innovation.
Delivering Impact Together
The value of the Partnership becomes most visible when collaboration turns into implementation.
Throughout ERTICO's history, Partners have been at the heart of its innovation activities and EU-funded projects. By bringing together complementary expertise from across the mobility ecosystem, ERTICO and its Partners have contributed to numerous European research and innovation initiatives addressing some of the sector’s most important challenges – from connected and automated mobility and traffic management to data sharing, clean mobility, urban transport and logistics.
These projects provide an important environment for Partners to co-develop, test, validate and demonstrate innovative solutions in real-world conditions, connecting research and technological development with the needs of public authorities, industry, operators and users. They also create opportunities to build strong European consortia, exchange expertise across sectors and countries, and contribute to priorities at the heart of Europe’s mobility transformation.
Importantly, the Partnership supports the full innovation journey: from identifying emerging challenges and developing project ideas together, through research, testing and large-scale demonstrations, to deployment and market uptake. In this way, EU-funded projects become a practical extension of the Partnership itself – transforming shared expertise and ambition into solutions with tangible European impact.
The Partnership also comes together through the ITS European and World Congresses, which provide a global stage for exchanging knowledge, showcasing solutions and connecting the organisations shaping intelligent mobility. Alongside other ERTICO events and activities, the Congresses help ensure that lessons from projects and deployments reach a wider community and contribute to further innovation.
Across these different activities, the principle remains the same: progress happens faster when expertise is shared and solutions are developed collaboratively.
Looking Ahead: The Next Chapter of the ERTICO Partnership
The next 35 years will bring challenges that are already beginning to reshape mobility today.
Artificial intelligence, automation, connected vehicles, data-driven services, new digital infrastructure and the transition towards climate-neutral transport will continue to transform how mobility systems operate. At the same time, Europe must address questions of competitiveness, resilience, accessibility, safety and public trust.
These developments will make cross-sector cooperation even more important.
ERTICO's role will therefore continue to evolve alongside its Partnership. The Partners First approach will remain central, ensuring that the knowledge and priorities of the community help guide future activities and identify where collective action can have the greatest impact.
The challenge will not simply be to develop new technologies. It will be to connect them, make them interoperable, scale successful solutions and ensure that innovation delivers meaningful benefits for people, businesses and society.
That requires an ecosystem capable of bringing the right actors together.
Innovation Happens Through Partnership
Thirty-five years of ERTICO demonstrate that intelligent mobility is not the result of one technology, project or organisation. It is the result of people and organisations choosing to work together.
From its founding members to today's community of more than 120 organisations, the ERTICO Partnership has grown and evolved together with the mobility sector itself. New technologies have emerged, priorities have shifted and the boundaries of ITS have expanded, but collaboration has remained the common thread.
As ERTICO enters its next chapter, its Partnership remains its defining strength: a community where expertise connects, ideas develop and innovation moves towards deployment.
The first 35 years have shown what partnership can achieve. The next chapter is ours to build together.
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Want to be part of the next chapter? Discover what it means to be an ERTICO Partner in our newly updated ERTICO Partnership Brochure, showcasing the opportunities to connect, collaborate, contribute to innovation and increase your impact across Europe’s mobility ecosystem. Whether you are already part of our community or considering joining, explore how the ERTICO Partnership can help turn shared ambitions into action.
Discover the new ERTICO Partnership Brochure
