Brussels, February 9, 2016 – Niels Nygaard, EOC Executive Committee Member and President of the Danish Olympic Committee, co-chaired the second meeting of the High Level Group on Grassroots Sports, which took place last 22 January in the Belgian capital city.
“Grassroots Sports” is to evaluate the place and role of grassroots sport in society and to provide ideas on better EU support. The Group is composed of high-level members having a great diversity of backgrounds and experiences. It includes current and former athletes, former ministers and politicians, academics, representatives of sport organisations and other high profile personalities in the field of sport.
The group concentrated on the issues of social inclusion and health and, following a proposal from the group’s chair, it agreed to broaden the scope of its work to include infrastructure and urban planning in the context of grassroots sport.
Social Inclusion and the role of grassroots sport
The group agreed to focus on the social inclusion of migrants in EU countries through grassroots sport, while not excluding other “hard-to-reach” groups of society. Challenges created by the current migration crisis were at the core of the discussion.
A lecture given by Heike Kübler, German Olympic Sports Confederation, presented the German programme Integration through sports that has been running for the past twenty years.
Subsequent discussions considered whether these programme were successful in the integration of migrants and whether they benefit societies and economies at large.
Grassroots sport’s contribution to a healthy society
Peter Krustrup, University of Copenhagen, gave a lecture on the issue of grassroots sports and health. Professor Krustrup presented team sports as a method for the prevention, treatment and rehabilitation of non-communicable diseases for people of all ages.

In the following discussion, the group looked at the time dedicated to physical education in schools across the EU and agreed that grassroots club sport can offer the greatest health benefits.

The chairs of the group, based on a proposal from the rapporteurs, presented a first outline of the final document that will be addressed to the European Commission by June 2016. Its recommendations will be developed in upcoming meetings.

The next meeting of the group will take place in mid-March, in Brussels. Its work will be presented at the next EU Sport Forum (9-10 March 2016, The Hague, the Netherlands).