Things didn’t drag on. On March 2, the Minister of Sports Amélie Oudéa-Castéra announced her desire to set up a national committee aimed at strengthening ethics in sport. A statement which was a response to the various excesses and cases – in the rugby and football federations in particular – which affected the world of French sport and its authorities. Crises which “all say the need to support concrete and definitive changes to strengthen the institutions of French sport”, specified the Minister.
This Tuesday, during an interview at the microphone of the morning of France Inter, Amélie Oudéa-Castéra accelerated the process and revealed the list of the twelve personalities who will make up this national ethics committee. Personalities “indisputable, qualified, coming from all walks of life, whose experience and complementary views will allow them to have the necessary perspective and the ambition to reform”, assures the person concerned.
This working and reflection group will be chaired by Marie-George Buffet, former Minister of Youth and Sports from 1997 to 2002, and athletics champion Stéphane Diagana. They will oversee a commission made up of experienced profiles as diverse as football coach Arsène Wenger; navigator Isabelle Autissier; former Olympic fencing champion and former sports minister (from 2002 to 2007) Jean-François Lamour; former fencer Emmanuelle Assmann; football referee Stéphanie Frappart; former handball player and sports sociologist Béatrice Barbusse; judoka Brigitte Deydier; former youth and sports inspector (1971 – 1983) Jacques Donzel; the president of the Federal Committee of Ethics and Deontology of Rugby and of the Ethics Commission of the International Cycling Union Bernard Foucher and the president of the Ethics Committee of the French Tennis Federation and arbitrator at the Court of Arbitration for Sport Franck Laty.
This club of 12 will meet quickly to provide proposals next fall for “a more ethical, more democratic and more protective governance of sport for practitioners, men and women”, promises the minister. “This work will feed, after the Olympic and Paralympic Games, changes to the legislative, regulatory and statutory framework to make the necessary improvements”, explained AOC in a column in Le Monde at the beginning of March.
