WRITTEN QUESTION E-3199/00

by Mario Mauro (PPE-DE) to the Council

(16 October 2000)

Subject: International body's discrimination of a sports company which has actively fought doping

For 15 years the company A & V Sport Ltd and the sports group Amore & Vita Giubileo Beretta have successfully participated in international sport and championed the health-related aspects of sport.

The Amore & Vita professional cycling team, part of the Fanini group, has the longest history in the international arena; it has had great worldwide success, winning, amongst others, 11 world championships, 28 Italian championships and 11 stages of the Giro d'Italia; it has introduced 3 700 athletes to cycling and has discovered and launched numerous champions, such as Cipollini, Bartoli, Tafi, Sorensen and others.

The team's manager, Ivano Fanini has, in recent years and in less suspicious times, actively fought against doping with the aim of cleaning up cycling, which is now the focus of huge controversy with cyclists from all over the world involved in cases of doping.

Despite the fact that A & V Sport Ltd met all the requirements of the International Cycling Union (ICU) for its 2000 membership, the latter organisation, and namely its president, Hein Verbruggen, first of all unreasonably delayed and then rejected the team's application for the year 2000.

The International Cycling Union has for no reason refused Amore & Vita the right to register as a professional world-class team. A legal dispute with the ICU on the matter has been pending for months. The team has therefore been unable to participate in international events such as the Giro d'Italia, in which it had previously taken part for 15 consecutive years, and it has now been prevented from taking part in the Giro di Lucca, a multi-stage cycling race held on the sports group's home ground and where the team therefore has the greatest number of sponsors and fans.

Can the Council say what immediate measures it intends to take vis-à-vis the International Cycling Union to enable the aforementioned company and sports group to register in the appropriate manner, thereby defending the sporting spirit and young cyclists, rather than the bureaucratic face of the ICU?

Does the Council not consider that the International Cycling Union's failure to register Amore & Vita and to provide due justification for such action would seem to indicate retaliation on the part of the ICU for Ivano Fanini's condemnations of doping in cycling and his anti-doping campaigns?

Does the Council not also consider that this situation has greatly damaged the families of the thirty racing cyclists from Italy and other EU countries, not to mention the sports company which manages the team and which, unable to participate in the main races, is losing its key sponsors and the chance to allow its sports group to continue competing in future years?

Reply

(26 February 2001)

The case to which the Honourable Member refers does not fall within the sphere of Community competence.

The Council is nevertheless aware of the importance of the continuous struggle against doping in sport. In that regard it would refer to the Resolution of the Council and of the representatives of the Governments of the Member States, meeting within the Council, adopted in 1992 (92/C44/01), which approves a code of conduct against doping in sport and calls on, among others, athletes, those forming the entourage of sportsmen and women (managers, trainers, coaches, etc.), national and international sports organisations and the media to apply the code of conduct in their sports activities.

The Council would also remind the Honourable Member that the European Council which met in Nice on 7, 8 and 9 December 2000 welcomed the Council conclusions concerning the World Anti-Doping Agency and agreed to intensify European cooperation in this area.