Panathlon International’s antenna in Brussels was successfully represented at different events organized by the EU DG Sport.
As the objective of P.I. is to develop a regular participation of Panathlon and Panathlon members into the development of ethical values in sport at an international level it is the aim and role of IB member Paul Standaert to focus on the European level.
Mr. Standaert was invited to the meeting of EU Expert Group on Integrity in Sofia, Bulgari on 12 and 13 November 2019.
Members of this group are international experts in the field of the struggle against Sport manipulation and match fixing. The Bulgarian Ministry (Mrs. Racheva -Slavkova Director Eu programmes), hosted the meeting and welcomed
Counties and Governments of EU states Denmark, Finland, Slovakia, Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, Malta, Hungary, Lithuania, Estland, Netherlands and more participated.
National and International organizations are invited to the Expert Group as observer and are welcome to share experiences and insights on these topics.
Observers represented sport unions, Interpol, SIGA, UNODC, ENGSO, Digital Sport Rights, FIFA, UEFA, International Betting Integrity Association and also Panathlon.
The meeting was chaired by Mr. Le Losteque Head of the EU unit Sport. He expressed the great interest of EU to the topic of good governance and match fixing and promotes applications to Erasmus + projects in the framework of the combat against match fixing.
For 2019 only 7 applications on the 260 granted are based on anti-match fixing.
Therefor EU calls for new projects on the topic. The next deadline for 2020 application is April.
Panathlon International is a collaborating partner in a 2019 project EPOSM, a initiative of the University of Gent in collaboration with the universities of Loughborough (UK), Lausanne (CH), Utrecht(NL), and also IRIS (FR) VMIS (Austria) Stichting CSVF (NL) The antenna of P.I. in Brussels will take care of the coordination for P.I.’s role and input in this project in collaboration and support of the Panathlon EU club.
In Sofia, M Standaert was able to represent Panathlon and to connect with the participants and specifically to representatives of Bulgari and Greece. Both expressed a sincere interest in Panathlon’s work and values, and they will study the possibility to start a Panathlon activity in their country.
Mr. Luciano Di Fonzo of EACEA reported the latest status about Erasmus + and shared some statistics on the evolution since 2014.
2014 – 40 projects
2019 – 260 projects selected upon 700 applications, for a total grant of 55 million EURO.
On the agenda of the meeting was an overview and status of the work realized by the expert group (already 4 meetings) It’s final report and recommendations is to be finalized in the next days.
On 30th of January 2020 EU will organize in Brussels an Erasmus+ Information day.