On 1 September 2017, the European Volleyball Confederation (CEV) held its 2017 General Assembly, gathering representatives from its 56 National Federations throughout Europe. With the support of the Polish Volleyball Federation, the CEV organised the meeting in Krakow, to allow participants to enjoy the last games of the 2017 Men's European Volleyball Championship.
In this occasion, the EOC EU Office was invited to present the outcomes of the EU-funded Project ‘Support the Implementation of Good Governance in Sport’ (SIGGS). This Project was implemented by the EOC EU Office together with 11 other partner organisations in the period 2015-2016.
Following a morning plenary session, in which CEV adopted a revised version of its statutes and regulations, representatives of national federations were divided in different workshops, including the one on good governance and EU projects conducting by Folker Hellmund, Director of the EOC EU Office, and Valentin Capelli, Policy Officer.
With more than 35 participants from around 25 different national volleyball federations attending the two sessions on good governance, the presentation was an excellent opportunity to discuss the importance of governance issues and the different perceptions around Europe. The other objective was to address representatives of national federations directly to explain the main features of the SIGGS self-evaluation tool on good governance for national sport federations as well as to show advantages of the use of the tool.
For both sessions, Folker Hellmund, made an introduction on the work of the EOC EU Office as well as the elements covered by the notion of good governance and the activities at the European and international level. Then, Valentin Capelli provided participants with more information on the SIGGS tool, insisting on the added value from investing in the topic of good governance and inviting all federations to freely use the tool to evaluate the governance of their own organisation.
These general presentations were followed by fruitful exchanges with the delegates. Several issues were discussed including the link between governance and financing by public authorities, the obstacles facing by national federations when dealing with these issues (e.g. lack of staff, lack of resources, different political priorities) as well as the advantages and opportunities of working on governance for a sport organisations as it should not be seen as creating a list of additional tasks, but rather as a continuous process impacting the culture of the organisation.
Another discussed element was the support provided by sport umbrella organisations or public authorities to national federations on this topic. In that perspective, the five national federations, which had already filled the SIGGS self-evaluation prior to the meeting, shared their experience and the benefits of being supported by such a tool.
Finally, delegates were interested to hear that CEV will take part in POINTS, the new EU project conducted by the EOC EU Office, which will start in January 2018 and will focus on integrity (match fixing and anti-corruption) issues as well as good governance. One of the objectives of the project is to further develop the SIGGS self-evaluation tool.
The SIGGS self-evaluation tool has been opened to all NOCs and national sport federations from all 50 countries of the EOC since its launch at the end of November 2016 at the SIGGS Final Conference. Following this CEV General Assembly, the SIGGS Project team hopes that even more federations will find the way to the SIGGS self-evaluation tool, available online via: siggs.novagov.com.
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