While French sport is going through a deep crisis of governance with the cases that taint the French Rugby Federation (FFR) or the French Football Federation (FFF), the law “to democratize sport” in France has never seemed to resonate so much with the news. Promulgated on March 2, 2022, the law encourages, among other things, the development of sports practice (Title I) and frames the economic model of professional sport (Title III).
The text also focuses, while Noël Le Graët resigned, Tuesday, February 28, from his position as president of the FFF, to thoroughly dust off the governance of sports federations (title II).
The law thus obliges national federations from January 1, 2024 – and from January 1, 2028 for regional bodies – to respect strict parity when renewing their governing bodies. Today, only three women chair one of the 36 Olympic federations in France. It also limits to three the number of terms that a president of a federation or professional league can exercise. The text also ensures the financial transparency of leaders and strengthens the means to fight against all forms of discrimination and sexual and gender-based violence.
Céline Calvez (Renaissance) remembers heated discussions before the adoption of the text with the actors of the French sports landscape, mainly white and rather old men. “Why would that change?” “, “Your law, we are going to rot it”, had often heard the deputy of Hauts-de-Seine, co-rapporteur for the sports law in the National Assembly. A year later, and even if “all the federations are not at the same point in the transcription of the law in their statutes” – judo or even handball are among the “good” students -, efforts towards a more great probity and more representativeness infuse the French sports movement.
Strengthening ethics in sport
Among the other measures of the law, those intended to promote “the development of the practice for the greatest number” represent the first half of the text of the law. They are essentially based on the strengthening of healthy sport, now extended to people with chronic diseases or with factors of hypertension, obesity, etc., and no longer just people with long-term conditions. The law also establishes thirty minutes of daily sport in primary school, generalized somehow to schools in France since the start of the school year in September.
Céline Calvez recognizes a certain delay in the application of Title I of the law. “These are measures that require a lot of interministerial dialogue (sport and health, sport and education, sport and territory, etc.). We need consultation, “argues the parliamentarian who explains that she reviewed, Tuesday, February 28, the sixty articles of the law with the Minister of Sports and the Olympic and Paralympic Games, Amélie Oudéa-Castéra.
“We are more in the control of the application of the law than in its evaluation. It is a bit early to assess, usually we wait three years to do so [i.e. after the 2024 Paris Olympic Games], “adds the Altosequanese deputy, who however suggests that the law, made “to be in order to walk for the 2024 Paris Games”, is perfectible. The text thus provides for local sports plans drawn up by the municipalities and the inter-municipalities in association with the clubs and schools of the territories. Céline Calvez wants to deepen the cooperation between the different actors and even imagines, on the model of Doctolib in terms of health, the establishment of a “sportlib” for shared access to classes and local sports equipment.
Furthermore, and the resignation of Noël Le Graët from the FFF at the age of 81 reminded us of this, setting an age limit on the exercise of directive functions within a sports federation is one of the hypotheses for improving the law, “whether in regulatory or legislative form,” says Ms. Calvez.
The MP also wants to continue the work to strengthen ethics in sports federations. In a column published Thursday, March 2 in Le Monde, Minister Amélie Oudéa-Castéra thus announces the establishment of “a national committee” to “strengthen ethics and democratic life in sport” which will have to do from here in the fall of proposals on “a governance of sport that is more ethical, more democratic and more protective of practitioners”.
