New president takes over at CECE

Eric Lepine supersedes Johann Sailer as president of the Committee for European Construction Equipment

ERIC Lepine (left of picture), general manager of Grenoble-based Caterpillar France SAS, has been appointed as president of the Committee for European Construction Equipment (CECE) for a two-year period, with effect from 1 January 2014.

He has taken over the presidency from Johann Sailer (right of picture), who has chaired the association for the last two years. The official handover took place in Paris in December during the last CECE-Steering Group meeting of the year.

With 26 years of experience in the industry, Mr Lepine held various key positions with Caterpillar in countries such as Belgium, Hungary, Poland, Russia, the US and the UK, before taking over responsibility in Grenoble.

Mr Lepine’s says his main goal for his presidency will be to ensure the implementation of the 10 points listed in the CECE-CEMA Industry Manifesto, which was presented during the 2013 CECE summit in Brussels to the members of the European Parliament and the European Commission.

He believes that CECE should focus on three main priorities during his term in office:  achieving a harmonization of road safety requirements for non-road mobile machinery within Europe; ensuring that industry’s needs are duly taken into account within the current revision of the exhaust emission legislation; and achieving final approval of the market surveillance legislation review, currently stuck at the European Council level.

‘We will keep on promoting the idea of fair competition and free trade for all market players in Europe. What we have to avoid is unnecessary complexity in laws and regulations,’ he said.

Mr Lepine’s deputy chairmen for the next two years are Christian Stryffeler, executive vice-president for the machine segment of Ammann AG, and Giampiero Biglia, business director with CNH Industrial.

As president of CECE, Mr Lepine is spokesman for 1,200 mainly medium-sized European construction equipment manufacturers (all of whom are members of CECE via their national associations) from 14 countries.

The European construction equipment industry achieves a turnover of €25 billion and employs 130,000 people.