Integrated approach to sport policy: good governance, accessibility and integrity

The Committee on Culture and Education adopted an own-initiative report by Hannu TAKKULA (ADLE, FI) on an integrated approach to Sport Policy: good governance, accessibility and integrity.

Members recalled that with the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty in 2009, the European Union acquired a specific competence for sport to build up and implement an EU-coordinated sport policy supported by a specific budget line.

This report lays down guidelines and recommendations for the European Commission’s work on evaluating its policy implementation which is also aimed at Member States and the organised sport sector, in cooperation with national and European public authorities.

Integrity and good-governance of sports: recent corruption scandals in sport have tarnished the image of sport, raising questions about the need for genuine and structural reforms of sport governing bodies and organisations. The report stressed the need for a zero-tolerance policy to corruption and other types of crime in sports. The report also stated that fighting corruption in sport requires transnational efforts and cooperation among all stakeholders, including public authorities, law enforcement agencies, the sports industry, athletes and supporters.

Members called on international, European and national sports organisations to commit to good governance practices, and to develop a culture of transparency and sustainable financing. This process must be complemented by a better separation of powers within the sports governing bodies, better division between commercial and charitable activities and better internal self-regulatory procedures to advance, detect, investigate and sanction sport crimes and illegal activities within the sports organisations.

Bidding to host major events should comply with good governance standards, with human and labour rights, and with the principle of democracy, in order to ensure a positive social, economic and environmental impact on local communities.

Members called on the Commission to develop a pledge board, and to explore the possibility of creating a code of conduct in the areas of good governance and integrity in sport. They also called on sports organisations to put forward by 2018 concrete proposals to enhance good governance standards for sports organisations.

Member States are encouraged to:

• make public funding for sports conditional, subject to compliance with established and publicly available minimum governance, monitoring and reporting standards;
• establish match fixing as a specific criminal offence and ensure that any criminal activity, such as match fixing and corruption in sports, is subject to judicial proceedings and appropriate sanction;
• support doping controls, national testing programmes and legislations allowing coordination and information-sharing between state authorities, sports organisations and anti-doping agencies.

Members reiterated their call for the establishment of transparency registers for the payment of sports agents, underpinned by an efficient monitoring system, in order to tackle agent malpractice. They condemned all forms of discrimination and violence in sport and recalled the need to boost the fight against human trafficking in sports, in particular the trafficking of children.

Social inclusion, social function and accessibility of sport: Members considered that investing in sports will help build united and inclusive societies, re?move barriers and enable people to respect each other by building bridges across cultures and across ethnic and social divides, and to promote a positive message of shared values, such as mutual respect, tolerance, compassion, leadership, equality of opportunity and the rule of law. The Commission is urged to allocate more funds to sport under Erasmus+, with a focus on grassroots sports and education, and to enhance its visibility and accessibility in order to improve the mainstreaming of sport into other funding programmes such as the ESIF or the Health Programme.

The report underlined the importance of education through sport and the potential of sport to help get socially vulnerable youngsters back on track and in preventing radicalisation.

Recalling that young European athletes are often faced with the challenge of combining their sports careers with education and work, Members underlined the need to ensure sustainable financial support for dual-career exchange programmes at EU and national level through the Erasmus+ Sport chapter. They called on the Member States to promote, in collaboration with educational institutions, cross-border exchanges of athletes and to provide access to scholarships for athletes.

Stressing that the lack of physical activity is identified by WHO as the fourth leading risk factor for global mortality, the report encouraged the Member States and the Commission to make physical activity a political priority in the next EU Work Plan on Sport, especially for young people and vulnerable communities from socially deprived areas where physical participation is low.

Member States are urged to:

• encourage citizens to pursue physical activities on a more regular basis by means of appropriate health policies and programmes for their daily lives;
• make licensed betting operators subject to mandatory and fair financial return to grassroots sports and projects aimed at improving mass-access to sports.

The report stressed that disabled people should have equal access to all sports facilities and urged the Member States to implement inclusive sport programmes for disabled people at schools and universities.

Members maintained that the selling of TV rights on a centralised, exclusive and territorial basis, with equitable sharing of revenues, is essential to the sustainable funding of sport at all levels.