Congress starts with historic decisions in Copenhagen

Congress starts with historic decisions in Copenhagen

The 10th Ordinary Congress of the European Handball Federation has begun on Friday morning in Copenhagen in front of the representatives of 49 EHF member federations plus the associated federation of Kosovo.

EHF President Tor Lian has opened the Congress and gave the floor to high ranked representatives of the organising country Denmark as a number of honorary guests attended the important sport political event and welcomed the federation representatives coming to the Danish capital.

First, the Danish Crown Prince Frederik welcomed the guests in his speech pointing out the importance of sports in society. Among others, Per Stig Möller, Minister of Sports and Culture, Niels Nygaard, President of the Sports Confederation of Denmark and of the Danish Olympic Committee greeted European Handball Federation and all the visitors coming to Denmark.

The President of the International Handball Federation, Hassan Moustafa, has also arrived in Copenhagen and spoke to the leaders of European Handball.

After the opening parts, formal matters were handled by the Congress. The President and the Secretary General gave reports on developments within the EHF and EHF Marketing. The financial matters were assessed by Treasurer Ralf Dejaco.

Motions to the Congress

The nations at the Congress were invited to cast their votes on four motions – the first one relating to the EHF structure and the others to the EHF legal system.

The Member Federations voted in favour of the creation of the Professional Handball Board, a common strategic platform for the stakeholders of European men’s handball – Nations, Clubs, Leagues and Players. The PHB, which aims to preserve the coherence of European handball, was accepted by the Congress with an overwhelming majority. The outcome of the vote once again underlined the clear intention within European handball to involve the various stakeholder groups in the opinion exchange and decision making process.

The delegates also adopted the motions on changing the legal structure of the EHF by creating a new second instance, the EHF Court of Appeal. As a consequent step, the Congress also voted in favour of changing the name of the existing first instance body, which will be called EHF Handball Court.

Finally, the Congress voted in favour of amending the Rules of Arbitration of the EHF Court of Arbitration.

Technical initiatives

Following the decision making work of the Congress, a number of technical initiatives, projects were presented to the representatives of the 50 federations meeting in Denmark.

The leaders of the federations had the opportunity to see Street Handball in practice and learn the basics of the game – a perfect promotion tool for handball – invented in Denmark by top handballers and coaches.

Saturday preview

The 10th EHF Congress will continue on Saturday with a number of important matters including the awarding of the 2014 EHF EURO competition as well as Younger Age Category tournaments for 2012-13.