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Nyon declaration on sport

UEFA President Michel Platini has met the French and Dutch Ministers for European Affairs in Nyon, Switzerland.

The parties at UEFA HQ
The parties at UEFA HQ ©UEFA.com

UEFA President, Michel Platini, met with the French and Dutch Ministers for European Affairs, Jean-Pierre Jouyet, and Frans Timmermans, as well as representatives from the six main team sports at the House of European Football in Nyon on Thursday.

Sport's specificity
Agreement was reached on a joint declaration to further protect the specificity of sport. This comes with a view to presenting further concrete proposals before the end of the year, to be jointly examined during the forthcoming French Presidency of the Council of the European Union.

Positive meeting
"We had a very positive meeting today with the French and Dutch Ministers responsible for European affairs and sport, and the other team sports federations," said Mr Platini. "Our goal is to help protect the European sports model and the specificity of sport and to provide the legal security to allow sports federations to conduct their statutory tasks."

Stability and legal security
The intention of the declaration overall is to guarantee stability and legal security for the European sporting movement in order to preserve, promote and develop sport in consideration of the benefits that it brings to society in terms of, for example, social cohesion, integration and education.

Areas of concern
The declaration outlines three main areas of concern to team sports in Europe: training and education, governance of clubs, and players' agents. With regards to training and education, it was agreed that it is necessary to underline the importance of sports federations in promoting training, in protecting young sports-people, through the introduction of strict rules, and to encourage training through, for example, the introduction of rules which foresee a minimum number of locally-trained players in teams. On the issue of the governance of clubs, the declaration recognises that the introduction by sports federations of a licensing system is an indispensable instrument for good governance.

Players' agents study
Finally, on the issue of players' agents, the declaration noted that the European Commission will shortly launch an impact assessment study and that this study will constitute the basis in order to better regulate this profession in the future, the aim being to better protect players and clubs from any irregular activities.

Click here for the full declaration.

The attendance list at the meeting can be found by clicking on this UEFA press release.