Santiago Fisas Ayxela: "the world of sport asks Europe to take measures"

Sport is one of the competences of the European Union since the Lisbon Treaty came into force. What is the added value of the EU in this field?
In any case, it is a subsidiary competence, as the main competences in sport belong to Member states and also to federations. But it is true that there are certain areas where the world of sport asks Europe to take measures, as, for example, the fight against doping-substances trafficking, making the fraud in sport an criminal offence, protecting minors, controlling the activities of sport agents, etc.

What do you think about the proposal of the European Commission to create a program dedicated to Sport, within the “Erasmus for all” program, with an envelope of 30 million Euros? What would be the actions the EU should support at first?
In my opinion, I believe that the word "Erasmus" should continue to be used as until now: exchange programs for young people. I believe that the money should be used for general European programs in order to support the organization of the European Day of Sport, the European Capital of Sport, the protection of indigenous sports, etc. I think that it is very important to be able to use structural funds for sport purposes, because the biggest amount of money we can use for sport infrastructures is in the structural funds.

What about the cooperation between the EU and the Council of Europe, which is very active in the field of Sport, or other sport institutions such as the IOC, the UEFA etc.?
I  firmly believe in the cooperation among bodies, as each of them has their own competences and it is of course very important to keep a close dialogue with European sport bodies like UEFA, Olympic committees, sportsmen associations, etc.

On issues like doping, racism, stadium violence, the Sport social impact, is the EU ready to commit itself? What about the means?
In these subjects that you mention is exactly where the EU should be involved, creating for example a European database in order to share information and to enhance cooperation, underlining the social impact that sport has and its importance for health, for the integration between different social groups and, above all asking Member states to adapt their legislation and, if necessary, to create a criminal offence to fight against doping-substance trafficking in the same way they fight against drugs. As I already mentioned, defining the sport fraud as a criminal offence in order to fight against illegal betting is also very important.

Sport is often described as a federative factor in our societies. Considering the current crisis, and the huge amount of money involved, spent into indecent salaries, is the EU willing to implement some regulation on this?
We live in a free market economy and it is really difficult to put salary limits. I do believe in financial transparency of clubs, agents and sportsmen, and Member states should take the corresponding measures (via taxation) in this sense. In any case, the European Parliament has entrusted Jean-Luc Dehaene a study on the financing of big clubs.