European Union: "zero tolerance"

In spite of the European Council’s adoption of the European Convention in the Campaign against Doping in 1989, it was on the occasion of the European Council of Vienna in December 1998 that the EU expressed its own concern about the scale and gravity of doping in sport. In the same period, the European Parliament adopted a resolution asking the Commission to evaluate the real dimension of the problem and propose measures at the Community level. In December 1999 the Commission presented a communication and an “EC plan of support for the campaign against doping in sport”. In 2000 budgetary provision was made by the European Commission for the financing of pilot projects in the antidoping field. In the course of 2001, the deterioration of the doping situation convinced the EU budgetary authorities to make another appropriation to fund pilot projects in favour of the antidoping campaign in Europe. So far 32 pilot projects have been funded on various aspects of the problem, including: biomedical and juridical questions of doping; harmonization of rules, procedures, controls and lists of illicit substances; prevention and information, especially among the young, on the health risks involved; ethical aspects of doping; role of young people as ambassadors of clean sport. According to Jacob Kornbeck, of the EU’s General Directorate of Education and Culture, Sport Unit “we may speak of the success of the pilot projects. We have funded 16 projects for the period 2000-2001 and a similar number for the period 2001-2002. There’s a great diversity of projects and a good geographical covering of the European territory, considering that the minimum partnership requested was five agencies from five EU member states”. The reasons for the EU antidoping campaign were explained to SirEuropa by Christophe Forax, spokesman of the press and communication service of the European Commission for cultural and educational policies: “Its origin was twofold. It was President Prodi himself who, in his inaugural speech to the EP in 1999, listed the campaign against doping in sport among the specific issues of concern to citizens for which provision is being made in the Commission’s programme. Moreover, the Commissioner responsible for Education and Culture, together with the delegate for sport, Viviane Reding, wants to open a new dialogue with the world of sport. The action taken by the Commission was also the result of a meeting that Romano Prodi had with the President of the IOC, Jacques Rogge, at the end of 2001, on the need to insert an article on doping on the new EU Treaty”. “At the present time – continued the spokesman – the European Parliament allocates 5 million euros per year for preparatory actions and pilot projects. The Commission, moreover, is about to approve the first “EC programme in the campaign against doping. The Commission is focusing on prevention and education in the member states with the help of the sports organizations and the national Olympic Committees”. According to Forax it is still too premature to speak of an EU antidoping policy because “the various sporting Federations have various regimes of sanctions, often ineffective, which lack even the possibility for the ordinary system of justice to intervene to enforce respect for sporting sanctions”. What the Commission aims at is to “advance the doping dossier through political pressure and concrete gestures; for example, finding a way in which the Justice and Internal Affairs Council can crack down on the traffic in doping substances, or by working on the statistics, on the causes of doping, on the information about the risks to sportsmen and doctors themselves, too often ignorant of the problem, and all this – concludes Forax – in a long-term perspective, without forgetting that 2004 will be the European Year of Education through Sport and also the Year of the Athens Olympics, games for which the Commission’s watchword as regards doping is ‘zero tolerance'”. G.A.G.