On 10 and 11 January 2018, the team of the ‘Single Points of Contact for Sports Integrity’ (POINTS) project organised its kick-off meeting, at the EOC EU Office premises. These two days officially launched the project that will run for a total of three years. Various activities, will take place in the different countries of the consortium. The key objective of the “POINTS” project is to help the National Olympic Committees (NOCs) and the  European and national sport federations in Europe to safeguard the integrity of their respective sport(s) and to strengthen their governance.

Managed by the EOC EU Office and supported by the European Commission through the Erasmus+ Sports Programme, the “POINTS” project will gather an impressive consortium of 18 organisations including 11 NOCs (Belgium, Denmark, Norway, Netherlands, France, Czech Republic, Slovenia, Italy, Portugal, Germany and Croatia), 3 European federations (European Athletics, European Volleyball Confederation and FIBA Europe) and 3 specialised organisations (INTERPOL, Sport & Recreation Alliance UK and EOSE). The IOC, through its Ethics and Compliance Office, is an associated partner of the project.

Following the opening speech from Folker Hellmund on the importance, for sport organisations, of being pro-active in the field of integrity and governance, Friedrich Martens, Head of Olympic Movement Unit on the Prevention of the Manipulation of Competition (OM Unit) from IOC Ethics & Compliance Office, presented the ongoing activities of the IOC regarding the fight against Manipulation of Sports Competition. He notably focused on the activities of “Single Points of Contact” (SPOC) in the context of the OM Unit and the IBIS system.

Building on this presentation and on the experience of the consortium, the partners used the second day of the meeting to reflect upon the way to further develop the concept of ‘Single Points of Contact for integrity’ for NOCs and European federations.

For the next steps of the project, the consortium will continue to work on the concept of ‘Single Points of Contact for integrity, with the aim to develop “Guidelines” to support the setting-up of such a SPOC within the partner organisations. In addition, in the second part of the year 2018 we will see the development of an educational programme to provide training and support for “Single Points of Contact”, prior to practical implementation of it in 2019. The next meeting will take place in Lausanne, in April 2018.