Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-09-14-Speech-2-130"
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"en.20040914.10.2-130"2
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".
Madam President, I share the honourable Member’s concern; doping is indeed killing sport. I have to tell you, though, that the only competences we as a Community can exercise are subsidiary in nature. Accordingly, the Commission cannot act except in order to add to and back up the action taken by sporting organisations and by the Member States.
Nevertheless, we have taken action. In 1999, the Commission adopted a Community anti-doping support plan and set out approaches that the campaign against doping might take. I have to say that we have had full support from your House, whereas there has been little or no response on the part of the Council; even so, we have embarked on practical action to combat doping, with, for example, analyses of the situation of young people in sports centres – which is disastrous – on socio-economic factors in doping and on the steps to be taken to protect young people. At the same time, we have helped the Member States to set up, jointly with the sporting world and with the sports federations, the World Anti-Doping Agency. We have made a practical contribution to this agency by training doping inspectors whose task is to carry out inspections on sportsmen and sportswomen.
As regards health programmes, too, steps have been taken to prompt Member States to act to prevent the use and abuse of drugs by young people. Prevention is, of course, also of the utmost importance, and so I would inform you that 2004 has been declared the ‘European Year of Education through Sport’. Throughout the year, thousands of projects have been set up in conjunction with schools, sporting associations and local and regional authorities in order to make young people aware of the dangers of doping and to encourage them to adhere to the principle of fair play in their sporting activities.
Of course, we will be unable to do more for as long as there is no clear and precise legal basis, but we have done some work on producing one. Ever since I was, in 1999, appointed Commissioner for Sport, I have organised, on a regular basis, an informal Council of Sports Ministers – we were unable to have a formal one – in order to encourage them to cooperate towards this end. Also on a regular basis, I have had meetings with Europe’s sporting association in order to encourage them, too, to join together in fighting the scourge of doping. Finally, the Convention has set the seal on this work by giving us its support and by proposing an article for the Constitutional Treaty that would require the EU to aim to protect the physical and moral integrity of the young, and of young sportsmen and sportswomen in particular. Once the treaty has been adopted, a real legal basis will be in place; we will be able to have official meetings of sports ministers, and will be able to take practical action. We are all looking forward to the new treaty."@en1
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