MAPIC welcomes a new voice for Europe’s retail property players

When the US-based ICSC closed its European chapter, incumbent chair Peter Wilhelm brought the major retail real estate players together and a new organisation, the ECSP, was born. The new body will be at MAPIC, representing the retail property industry.

AFTER the decision by the ICSC in 2019 to close its European chapter, Peter Wilhelm, CEO of Brussels-based Wilhelm & Co — and the last chair of the now defunct ICSC Europe — organised a meeting with the major European players and stakeholders. They discussed the opportunity to launch a new organisation, which would focus on representing the industry at a European level and provide a platform where its members could exchange views on specific topics, such as sustainability, marketing and best practices. As a result, the European Council of Shopping Places (ECSP) was o cially launched a year ago, with Wilhelm swapping chairs to represent the new body. Wilhelm recalls: “We started our activities at the beginning of 2020, which proved to be not the easiest time for our industry. The support we have received from the industry and various stakeholders has been exceptional, maybe because we all felt that because of the crisis, we needed to have our voices heard.” Today, most of the major retail players are members of the organisation, including ECE, URW, SES, Metro Properties, Nepi Rockcastle, Rodovre Centrum, ADG, Atrium Deutsche Euroshop, Union Investment, BNP Paribas Real Estate, Eversheds Sutherland and others, including Wilhelm & Co of course. Many national councils have also joined, including those representing the French, Italian, Spanish, Belgian, Luxembourg, German, Ukrainian and Portuguese markets. “The welcome at the European institutions was also very encouraging,” Wilhelm says. “After the disappearance of the US-based ICSC from Europe, they were more than happy to welcome roughly the same interlocutor under a new, more European brand, the ECSP.” He says that the ECSP has constant contact with the European authorities and that it is invited to bring its contribution to help define the key future European key strategies, such as the Green Deal, by sharing the industry’s challenges, and ambitions. “During the worst phase of the pandemic, we also managed to establish a contact with the European Central Bank (ECB), at a time when our members were caught between retailers no longer capable of paying their rents and covenants linked to their financial structure,” he says. Most of the ECSP’s members have been present at MAPIC since its inception and the ECSP’s ambition is to be a trade organisation, rather than an event organiser. “This of course doesn’t mean that we will no longer have annual summits and similar events,” Wilhelm says. “It seemed evident that a presence at MAPIC had to be envisaged. Nathalie Depetro [MAPIC director] and her team strongly supported the idea and this is the reason for our presence,” he adds. “If, hopefully, we can eventually turn the page of the pandemic, we look forward to having further discussions with MAPIC to envisage how we can create a co-operative but independent relationship.” 

Because of the crisis, we needed to have our voices heard”