Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-05-08-Speech-4-076"
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"en.20080508.4.4-076"2
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"Mr President, before I speak I should declare that I have a number of financial interests related to this subject, which are listed in my declaration available on the internet.
I would also like to congratulate the rapporteur, Mr Mavrommatis, for his concern and knowledge of this subject, especially regarding doping in sport.
In fact, the first draft of his report, before the amendments came in, was probably as good a document on this subject as you will ever find in short form. As ever, though, the committees came in at this point, and the amendments that were adopted in the Committee on Culture ruined just about any good work that was done. For example, the bizarre call for a European police force for sport in paragraph 59, or the talk about ‘financial doping’ in paragraph 16, which is having a snipe against private investment and in some cases inward investment into the European Union. This report unfortunately looks at sport through the lens of professional football. As a soccer referee, mainly at the amateur level, for the last 28 years, I can tell you this report does absolutely nothing to address the problems that amateur football has, let alone those of amateur sport in general.
This House says that we are not trying to influence the decisions of governing bodies, but already we have seen in the debate today an attack on FIFA’s ‘six-plus-five’ idea. Governing bodies should watch out. Giving the priority on sport to the European Union is not a good thing.
Turning to sports betting, we have heard many views on this. Using this report to try and close down the debate on liberalising gambling and the lottery market is plainly wrong. This debate should go in a different direction and come from a different committee. Those that talk about it should just look at what is happening in Italy, where the gradual liberalisation of the market has grown the amount of money available to all.
We have talked about the collective selling of television rights which I am in favour of because it has worked in the UK, but I strongly believe in subsidiarity and surely this should be left to the Member States.
There are many good things in this white paper on sport, even if too little mention is made of the Special Olympics and the Paralympics movements. But, overall, this report is an insult to the Irish voters by talking about the Lisbon Treaty as if it were already here and as if their vote does not count. Therefore the UK Conservative delegation will have to vote against at the end."@en1
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