site.btaSports Minister Opens Seminar on Good Governance in Sport

Sports Minister Dimitar Iliev opened a seminar on Friday in Sofia on the ACTION - Unified Code of Good Governance in Sport project, co-funded by the EU Erasmus+ programme. "Together we can create even better conditions for our athletes - the basis for achieving high sporting results," he told participants.

The project aims to develop a universal code for good governance in sports to be implemented in European countries. An anonymous online survey of sports federations identified four key principles of good governance: transparency, accountability, democracy and social responsibility, noted Grzegorz Botwina, President of the Polish Institute for Sports Governance.

Respondents in Bulgaria included representatives of the badminton, swimming, tennis, athletics and judo federations. Good practices were shared by the federations of athletics, boxing, tennis and the Bulgarian Football Union.

Botwina added that there are five areas of the code outlined in the draft. And they are: an effective general assembly, a legitimate and active governing board, an accountable and transparent federation. As the identified principles are of a wishful rather than binding nature, the representatives of the nearly 30 Bulgarian sports federations that participated in the seminar expressed hope that they will be implemented for the sake of the development of sport.

The coordinator of the project is the Institute for Sport Governance (Poland) and the partner organisations are the Cyprus Sport Organisation, the Federal Ministry for Arts, Culture, the Civil Service and Sport (Austria), Sport Malta, LUNEX University - International University of Health, Exercise & Sports (Luxembourg), the General Secretariat of Sports (Greece) and the Lithuanian Union of Sport Federations.