On July 17 and 18, 2013, the Council Expert Group on Good Governance (XG GG) met for the sixth time in Brussels. One of the topics on the agenda was the deliverable "Principles of Good Governance in sport"
The meeting, chaired by Darren Bailey, was attended by the Representatives of 17 Member States and a number of sport organisations who acted as observers. The EU projects on Good Governance, financed under the Preparatory Actions in the field of sport 2011, were also invited to attend the meeting. The Sport for Good Governance (S4GG) project, managed by the EOC EU Office, was among the participating projects.
At the start of the meeting, the projects of Good Governance were asked to present the main outcomes and findings of their activities. The S4GG Project was presented by Matthias Van Baelen. Additionally, the Commission had asked the different projects to contribute to the annex of the second deliverable “Principles of Good Governance in sport” by listing facts, data and good practice examples.
Subsequently, the main text of this second deliverable was at the core of the discussion between Member States and observers. In general, the different principles of the deliverable are in line with the Basic Universal Principles of Good Governance of the International Olympic Committee (IOC). However, it was agreed that the application of a flexible, pragmatic and proportionate approach is crucial when implementing these EU principles.
One point where clarification is essential is the follow-up of the principles and the related role of the European Union. Although it was clearly mentioned that: “autonomous self-regulation by the sport movement remains the best option”, the document explains that the role of the EU should consist in encouraging compliance with these principles. A wide range of possible steps are listed, from providing European funding for additional Good Governance projects (e.g. under the Erasmus+ programme) over monitoring and benchmarking activities to more severe measures such as making EU and/or national funding conditional to the compliance with the Good Governance principles.
The full text of the EU "Principles of good governance in sport" can be found here: http://ec.europa.eu/sport/library/policy_documents/xg-gg-201307-dlvrbl2-...