EU Consultation on Sport

[Jay]

Dear all,

As some of you will know, the European Commission (the civil service of the European Union) have decided - for the first time - to get a Sports Policy. This is primarily as a result of the Independent European Sports Review, published last year, which called for the EU to develop a policy to provide a framework for the EU to interact with sport. At present, without such a framework, the only place where this happens is in the European Court of Justice, and has led to important policy changes like the Bosman Ruling being made by Judges, not by the whole sport community in the framework of a proper policy.

The first stage of this is a White Paper, which will propose that policy. There is also a resolution being tabled before the European Parliament which will no doubt feed into the process.

In order to help guide that policy, the European Commission have opened a public consultation on what their policy should be covering. They've made this an online consultation, so members of the public and representatives of organisations can submit their thoughts. As we know that others within the football world will be adding their two penn'orth, it would be good if Trusts and individuals within Trusts could submit their own thoughts on the feedback - the more the merrier!

If you have the time, it would be good to circulate amongst messageboards ands mailing lists at your clubs. It's a minority interest obviously, but there's always a few people switched on about these sorts of issues, and this is a crucial time for this issue. The Euorpean Review had a lot of good things to say about Trusts and the whole way football was going, and if we want to make sure that's followed up we have to get into the debate in every way we can.

The consultation is here:

http://ec.europa.eu/yourvoice/ipm/forms/di...007&lang=en

And will be open until April 3rd.

Best wishes,

Dave Boyle

Deputy Chief Executive

Supporters Direct