Mr. Weinreich addressed the important issue "How to protect the future of our sport". He spoke about the future of our sport, the problems we face as an aging community exercising an expensive and complicated sport. He addressed the importance of creating an attractive sport, recruit and integrate new members, in particular young people.
The burden of regulations is another issue that, together with the cost of managing these administrative issues, is another big problem for gliding.
Luckily we have organisations like EGU and EAS where volunteers work for us to try to reduce the consequences of the rules proposed by organisations like EASA and Eurocontrol.
IGC has a good chance to manage and develop gliding in the future, but we need to lobby.
Our influence is too limited on the airspace question. The airspace limitations will increase as commercial air traffic expands widely.
We must identify the experts we have amongst our own members, and support them so that they can go out and safeguard our airspace and thereby the future of our sport. I am sure that this body is in a good position to address all the problems above, Mr Weinreich concluded.
Full text of Wolfgang Weinreich's speech.