EU sports policy: assessment and possible ways forward

Mittag, Jürgen & Naul, Roland:
EU Sport Policy: Assessment and possible ways forward, European Parliament, Research for Cult Committee - Policy Department for structural and cohesion policies; Brüssel 2021, 194 pages
ISBN 978 92 86 8006 1 (print version)
ISBN 978 92 86 8005 4 ((2021)652251" target="_blank" class="external-link-new-window">PDF-document)

The Lisbon Treaty marked an important milestone for sports politics and policies in Europe. The EU was given a legal basis for shaping European sports policies in the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) in 2009. This has provided the EU with an explicit power to act in sport. Since Lisbon, the EU has had competence to support and coordinate activities in sport, but it cannot pursue harmonisation or shift competences. The current sports policy activities of the EU institutions are therefore mainly aimed at soft policies such as fostering exchange and values in sport as well as developing the European dimension of sport. This is mirrored particularly in distributive measures and the allocation of goods and resources.

Despite the limited formal expansion of the EU’s competences, the implementation of EU sports policies has provided a fundamental evolution to the European dimension of sport. A steadily growing number of public and private actors are involved, more and more sectors and policy areas are covered; enhanced funding and increasingly complex forms of interest representation illustrate the key characteristics of sport-related dynamics and growth at European level. In summary, over the past decade European sports politics and policies have been characterised by on-going processes of growth and differentiation while the demand for priorities and suitable forms of coordination has risen.

The IESF cooperated closely on this project with Prof. Dr. Roland Naul and his team from the Willibald Gebhardt Institute at the University of Münster. ENGSO Youth and the EUPEA network were further cooperation partners who accompanied the project, not least with a view to the European multi-level system.