ABSTRACT
The Eurobarometer survey on sport and physical activity indicates that 40% of the European Union citizens engage in a sport activity on a regular basis (with one-third of them engaging in the competitive practice of sport in a club) and almost 15 million people work in the sports industry. The social, economic, media and cultural importance of sport is indisputably recognised in every European country, in all 27 countries of the European Union and all 47 member countries of the Council of Europe. In this respect, it is the number one non-governmental and volunteer-organised activity in Europe. It gathers more participants and volunteers than any other activity. Consequently, for the European Commission, ‘sport is one of the fundamental aspects of the life of millions of European citizens’. Article 165 of the Treaty of Lisbon of 1 December 2009, states that ‘the Union shall contribute to the promotion of European sporting issues, while taking account of the specific nature of sport, its structures based on voluntary activity and its social and educational function’. Following the European cultural convention, the Council of Europe took an interest in sport in the early 1960s and passed its first resolution on this matter in 1967. However, despite the intervention of the European institutions in some relatively consensual aspects of sport, 1 sport still falls within the abilities of each Member State, since it pertains to their national interests.
