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Behind d Whistle (15.12.2006) Towards an EU White Paper on Sports
Towards an EU White Paper on Sports
The Ministerial Conference titled, “The EU & Sport: Matching Expectations”, was held in Brussels last week. In the course of this conference, the EU Sport Ministers and the various bodies present for the same meeting came to several important conclusions.
First and foremost, this ministerial conference emphasized the importance of sport. At the same time, the members present for the meeting unanimously welcomed the Commission’s intention to launch a policy initiative on the role of sport in Europe which will take the form of a White Paper.
This White Paper intends to address the intrinsic value of sport as well as the societal and economic dimensions of sport. In this scenario, the White Paper should aim to:
a) ensure that European policies take into account the value added of sport
b) develop and implement the “specificity of sport” in line with the Council’s Nice Declaration
c) facilitate the relations between EU and sport with the goal to achieve more clarity for sport stakeholders.
Another interesting conclusion was that the conference suggested that the challenges posed by the interaction between the specificity of sport and application of EU law to sport be addressed.
The problem of doping in sports was also discussed and the conference expressed a strong commitment to the ratification and implementation of the UNESCO International Convention against Doping in Sport. Basketball in Europe was represented by the FIBA Europe secretary General, Nar Zanolin.
Following the conference, the latter was interviewed and he gave concise views on what the conference meant for both FIBA Europe and the general European basketball environment. Zanolin stated that the goal of these meetings is to help the European Union introduce a sound sport policy that ultimately recognizes sport as a unique social movement.
Under existing European Union Treaty Rules, sports governing bodies are treated with the same rules as public authorities. This has resulted in several court cases, such as the Bosman ruling, which, at times, have had a negative impact on sport in Europe.
It is a known fact that sport needs to have a more stable legal environment to ensure a healthy future. The Bosman ruling, which arose in 1995 in the case of Belgian football player Jean-Marc Bosman, literally transformed the landscape of sport and the movement of players within the EU. Effectively the ruling allowed sportsmen and women to pursue their trade anywhere within the EU, in line with the rules of normal workers.
General experience in most countries in the last years has shown clearly that this Bosman ruling was and is potentially very harmful to the development of young players in EU countries. The ruling allowed a flood of foreign workers into basketball leagues across Europe. As a result, basketball clubs began to focus on bringing in players which do not cost much rather than developing homegrown talent. This has a negative effect on the long-term future of the sport. One cannot say that only the Bosman ruling had an effect on sports as there are many legal actions that have damaged sport in recent years. Yet, the Bosman had the most high profile.
FIBA Europe firmly believes that introducing a sound EU sports policy would protect sport from these legal actions. After all, many experts agree that legal stability is a vital factor in the future of sport. FIBA Europe, along with the other team sports federations, wants the EU to acknowledge that sport is not just a business, but a social activity and should be treated as such.
Therefore community policy should not apply to all areas of sport as it should have specific status, hence the term “specificity of sport”. Sport should be allowed to make its own rules for itself in most instances, taking into account its own specific needs. If the policy had to be introduced, sport will become exempt from certain areas of community law.
The most obvious example will be that national and international federations will be allowed to set their own rules. Some may rightly be asking why has there never been a sports policy drafted before. In actual fact, the introduction of such a sports policy has been on the EU agenda for many years and it was first mentioned in writing as part of the Treaty of Amsterdam in 1997.
The Nice Declaration in 2000 went further and proposed policy guidance as to how certain issues regarding sport should be approached as a matter of community law. It was further proposed that an article devoted to sport would be included in the European Constitution, but the demise of the constitution, some months ago, meant that there is still no such treaty article on sport.
There is no doubt that sport generates revenue and for the more popular sports this means significant and, possibly, massive amounts of money. However, sport cuts across the political, cultural, social and economic spheres.
Sport is not just played by an elite number of professionals. In 2004 a survey showed that 60% of the EU’s population effectively engages in regular sporting activity in one of the 700,000 sports clubs in the EU. Further studies and economic statistics suggest that sport, in a broader sense, generated value-added of 407 billion Euro in 2004. These account for both 3.65% of the EU GDP as well as 15 million employees or 5.4% of the European labour force.
The pyramidal structure (ideally) ensures that there is a link between people involved in sport at all levels and any income generated serves as solidarity payments which make their way down to the grass-roots level.
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Latest page update: made by vassallobernard
, Jan 26 2007, 1:03 PM EST
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