Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, we used to learn at school: ‘Mens sana in corpore sano’ – a healthy mind in a healthy body, and we are, in theory, all acquainted with this wisdom from ancient Rome. Of all leisure activities, sport is the most widespread, with one out of every three Europeans participating in some form of it, some of them, indeed, continuing to do so well into old age. Physical activity promotes health, and competition in sport develops a range of social skills, such as friendship, team spirit, solidarity, commitment, perseverance and, last but not least, fair play. As you will all be aware, you can tell a good sportsman by the way he wins, but a great one by the way he loses. Despite sport's essential social role, ladies and gentlemen, there is no policy on it at Community level. We have therefore been campaigning in this House for a number of years already, for the legal basis for this to be enshrined in the Treaties. We can therefore unreservedly welcome the way the Commissioner has at last responded to the aspiration expressed in my last report on sport, produced as long ago as 1996, and proclaimed a year of sport. It is admittedly not being called the Year of Sport, but, for many understandable reasons, the ‘Year of Education through Sport 2004’. It is about using a large number of projects to highlight sport's role in informal learning and its educational value, and also the close partnership between school sport and the services provided by the many kinds of sporting organisations that exist in Europe. To come to the point, the objective and rationale of the ‘European Year of Education through Sport 2004’ is not to show what people are capable of in the sporting arena – something that we can demonstrate to ourselves to our own satisfaction every day of the year on dozens of television channels – but to show what sport can do in human terms and for people. There is consensus in this House as regards the Year's seven objectives. It is to promote cooperation between educational institutions and sporting organisations, the development of social skills through sport, voluntary activity, pupils' mobility by means of international competitions, a balance between mental and physical activity, as well as consideration of how the educational needs of young sportsmen and women are to be met. Ladies and gentlemen, the Council has accepted the essential points of the report passed by this House at First Reading stage. What is important is that it has confirmed the amount of funding involved, the EUR 11.5 million that the Commission believes to be sufficient to complete in this Year those things that it has in mind to do. If everyone now plays their part – and that includes the media – then this Year can be of truly great significance for sport. I very much hope that the trend towards the decreasing importance of school sport can be turned round. By means of this Year, we want to build up networks and give an impetus to cross-border cooperation. What we do not want is for the small amount of money to be spent on even more interminable research projects. Research is always in progress, and that is not what this Year is for. I believe that the only research we need is to ask ourselves, when it is all over, ‘what has this Year achieved?’ but otherwise not to spend money on it. The Council shares our view on this. It has also accepted my idea of organising a European competition in the run-up to the Olympic Games – incorporating it, not into the Treaty, but into a protocol. I am very happy about this, and I very much hope that the Commission will respond to our concern by announcing a competition culminating in its victors being allowed to be present at the lighting of the Olympic flame in Olympia in 2004. That would be a fitting climax for the Year of Education through Sport. What, ladies and gentlemen, is all this about? It is our intention to establish a platform for educational measures in sport above and beyond frontiers, institutions of state education and organisations. We want to kick-start cross-border initiatives and networks, and we have to set up an ideas exchange, enabling exemplary projects and initiatives – that is to say best practices – to be followed by as many as possible during the preparations in 2003 and the actual Year in 2004. The Community projects instrument will receive 80% support, and those things done at national level alone will receive 50% co-financing. This seems to me to be very well suited to putting this Year's European dimension centre-stage. I think I will leave it at that, but would like to thank the Council and the Commission and express the hope that we will all be able to take the idea of this Year of Education through Sport back to our communities, and that, eventually, the Convention will be astute enough to give sport a legal basis.

Political group: PPE-DE