On 29 November, the Council of Europe and the World Anti-Doping Agency signed a memorandum of understanding with the aim of strengthening their co-operation in the areas of monitoring and compliance, standard setting and national anti-doping programmes.
Meeting in Budapest to discuss co-operation against doping, match-fixing and corruption, the Council of Europe sports ministers adopted several resolutions aimed at promoting integrity in sport.
In its resolution on the role of the governments in the fight against doping in sport at national and international level, the participants agreed on the need to:
- assess and, where necessary, revise and improve national anti-doping policy and practice, and ensure that the governments’ actions complement those of national and international anti-doping organisations;
- strengthen the ability of WADA to respond to current and emerging challenges in the anti-doping field;
- support the Council of Europe’s to facilitate the development of a permanently functioning and dynamic mechanism of co-ordination and information exchange between public authorities from all continents in WADA and on WADA-related issues;
- ask the Monitoring Group to the Anti-Doping Convention (T-DO) to explore the need and possibility of reviewing the Council of Europe Anti-Doping Convention.
Concerning the Council of Europe Convention on the Manipulation of Sports Competition, the ministers supported the elaboration of a roadmap to foster the convention’s effectiveness and accelerate the mobilisation and co-operation at national and international level.
The Resolution on better governance in sport focuses on enhanced co-operation between governmental bodies and stakeholders in sport. Among others, the text:
- welcomes initiatives such as the International Sport Integrity Partnership, that aim to co-ordinate efforts of the sports movement, international organisations, governments and other relevant stakeholders, to implement high standards of transparency and good governance in sport;
- invites the Enlarged Partial Agreement on Sport (EPAS) to prepare a proposal for the Council of Europe Committee of Ministers on the ways in which the European Governments could co-operate with an International Sport Integrity Partnership, including co-ordinated governmental measures towards sports organisations which are clearly not taking steps to comply with applicable standards on the good governance of sport;
- encourages all international federations to adopt the Association of Summer Olympic International Federations (ASOIF) Key Governance Principles and Basic indicators, as a first step towards improving their governance.
On the occasion of the conference, Azerbaijan, Belgium, Luxembourg, Norway, Poland, Romania and Turkey signed the Convention on an integrated safety, security and service approach at football matches and other sports events. Belgium and Hungary signed the Convention on the Manipulation of Sports Competitions.
