Education Youth, Culture and Sports Council (EYCS), November 2017

Decision-making time was upon Brussels for the past two days as the Estonian Presidency of the Council of the European Union hosted the latest Education, Youth, Culture and Sports Council (EYCS). Attended by the concerned national ministers from all Member States, and Tibor Navracsics, the Commission’s representative, specific aspects of each topic where discussed, reviewed and debated before the policies were adopted for implementation across the Union.

The Sport Agenda was established to:

– Adopt conclusions on the roles of coaches in society, a priority set by the Estonian Presidency, given coaches are now perceived to play a considerable role in regards to the personal development of young athlete’s via their human and social capital. As of such, coaches need support from appropriate frameworks and need to be equipped with the required skills and competences in order to fulfill this new role- a direct pursue of the last Work Plan for Sport 2017-2020;

– Adopt a resolution to help expand the high-level structured dialogue between actors of the sport movement, national authorities, and EU institutions, in the quest to provide scope for further practical discussion on an executive level;

– Debate the main challenges to sport in the 21st century, under the evolution of perception of sport from simple activity to presently being recognized as an important economic driver, threatened by elements such as doping, corruption, violence and match-fixing. To fight the latter, greater national and sport movement cooperation is required. For the occasion the IOC president Mr Bach was invited to share his insight.

Lastly, attention was also given to WADA’s latest meeting, the outcomes of the World Conference on Doping in Sport, and to supporting the Olympic truce in light of the Winter Games in Pyeongchang (South Korea).