On 17 December 2014, the 11th Executive Board meeting of the EOC EU Office took place in Brussels. Representatives of the EOC (Patrick Hickey, President, Kikis Lazarides, Treasurer, and Rafaelle Pagnozzi, Secretary General), IOC (Christophe de Kepper, General Director), DOSB (Michael Vesper, CEO) and the Czech Olympic Committee (Petr Graclik, Secretary General) discussed the budget of the EOC EU Office and the implementation of the activities in 2014.

Folker Hellmund, Head of the EOC EU Office, presented the main tasks of the EOC EU Office for 2015 including the implementation of the SIGGS Project (“Support the Implementation of Good Governance in Sport”) co-funded by the Erasmus+ Sports funding Programme. The representatives of the Board agreed that the data protection reform will be the most important political topic for sport on the EU agenda for the year 2015. Furthermore, they concluded that one of the main challenges is to set-up working relationships with the different new political actors in Brussels. In this regard, it was agreed that a bilateral meeting between the IOC President and the new Commissioner for Sport, Tibor Navracsics, should be scheduled in the near future.

Overall, the representatives of the Executive Board expressed their great satisfaction for the excellent work of the EOC EU Office in recent years. In particular, initiatives such as the new brochure “Funding for Sports in the European Union” and the Policy Papers were highly appreciated. EOC President Patrick Hickey also explicitly thanked the Czech Olympic Committee for its commitment and support to the EOC EU Office by the detachment of Jana Janotová. The Czech Olympic Committee became partner of the EOC EU Office in September 2014.

The next Board meeting will most likely take place in the first half of 2015.