“Targets massively endangered”
DOSB rages against the federal government’s sports reform plans
March 1, 2024, 5:36 p.m
Top-class sport in Germany is in crisis, there is agreement between the umbrella organization of German sport and the Federal Ministry of the Interior. But when it comes to the means to overcome this, there is a row: the ministry’s plans leave DOSB boss Thomas Weikert stunned.
End of unity, the DOSB attacks its financier: The BMI draft bill on the long-announced sports funding law “endangers the goals of the competitive sports reform,” said the umbrella organization of German sports – and denounced a “deterioration in the status quo” if the plans were implemented in the same way become.
The 52-page paper went to the departmental vote this Friday. For the DOSB – for which the funding is ultimately intended to pave the way for it to return to the top five nations at the Summer Olympics and to remain in the top three at the Winter Games – this draft contains “significant implementation weaknesses in the areas of ‘independence of the agency’ and ‘cooperation “between politics and sport on an equal footing” and “cutting bureaucracy”.
It is “sobering” to note that the Federal Ministry of the Interior “is questioning the previously trusting cooperation with organized sport after more than two years of intensive joint work on a reform of competitive sports and the promotion of top-class sports.”
Fear of even more bureaucracy in top-class sport
Crucial point: According to the draft, the federal government has the final say on fundamental questions about the allocation of funds. Paragraph 18, paragraph 1 states: “The foundation is a federal foundation in whose financing initially only the federal government participates. Therefore, the federal government has half of the voting rights and has the right to make decisions in the event of a tie.”
DOSB President Thomas Weikert explains that the draft bill is “a bitter disappointment for the athletes and unacceptable for all organized sport in Germany a few months before the Olympic and Paralympic Games in Paris: “Instead of, as agreed, with a more flexible and less “In order to eliminate the existing rigidities and obstacles to the success of athletes in the bureaucratic promotion and control of top-class sport, the status quo will be institutionalized by the new agency.”
In addition, the “inclusion of the Federal Office of Administration in the funding process threatens to continue the excessive administrative processes” that are currently “preventing the leading associations from concentrating on the work” with the active members, the DOSB said.
How independent is the planned agency?
The planned sports funding law is intended to counteract the loss of medals in Olympic sports in the short term; at the Summer Games in Tokyo 2021, Germany was only ninth in the medal table with only ten gold medals. The decline since the first post-reunification games in Barcelona in 1992 (third, 33 gold) is all too obvious. And despite all the agreement about the goal, the solution seems extremely difficult.
According to the DOSB, “the agency can no longer be said to be independent given the shackles placed on it by the federal government in this draft”. The association will therefore “clearly oppose this in the interests of the athletes and top-class sport in Germany in the further proceedings.”
According to the DOSB, the agreed goal of making top-level sports funding simpler and more efficient is at massive risk: “However, since the processes are not improved and an agency that is weak in action only adds another actor to the existing system, the draft is in the DOSB’s view even a worsening of the status quo.” The quintessence of the umbrella organization: “The achievement of sporting goals and future success at the top level are massively jeopardized by this draft.”
When the concept was presented at the 48th Sports Ministers’ Conference (SMK) in Herzogenaurach last September, there was still a consensus between sports and the sports ministry. At the time, Weikert raved about a “milestone in the further development of the competitive sports system in Germany.” Now organized sport only sees itself as a junior partner. And rebels against it.