On 7 December, the EOC EU Office organised the final conference of its RINGS project, co-funded by the Erasmus+ Sport programme of the European Union. After the final meeting between the 13 consortium partners including 11 NOCs, the final conference was an opportunity to outline the relevance of the project and showcase the results achieved. The speakers presented the deliverables, namely the Handbook on Strategic Management of National Olympic Committees written by a team from the University of Mainz; the Public Affairs Guidelines developed by NOC of Denmark, giving sport organisations the keys to navigate through public affairs and relations; the Stakeholders Tool developed by the EOC EU Office for sport organisations to understand their ecosystem with adapted actions list to approach each stakeholder strategically; and finally, the Online Sport Governance Platform which brings together all tools developed by the EOC EU Office through its Erasmus+ projects. Cédric van Branteghem, former 400m Olympic runner and CEO of the NOC of Belgium, delivered a keynote speech on how the principles of adaptability, proactivity, creativity were relevant to both his careers as a high-level athlete and a leader of a sport organisation.
The conference was attended by representatives of a number of European NOCs, the European Commission, the European Parliament and the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). The EOC EU office would again like to thank the project partners and the European Commission for their support!