President Patrick Hickey delivers keynote speech on first day of EOC Seminar in Cyprus
Nicosia; 23 May 2014: The European Olympic Committees (EOC) President Patrick Hickey today stressed the importance of autonomy and good governance during a keynote address on the opening day of the EOC Seminar in Nicosia, Cyprus.
Addressing delegates at the 2014 Olympic Solidarity Forum – one of two workshops that took place today – President Hickey identified autonomy and good governance as “two sides of the same coin” and “vital to our very existence.”
Speaking after his key note address President Hickey, who is also Head of the IOC’s Autonomy Commission, said:
“Autonomy is a necessity for the Olympic and Sports Movement but we are seeing an increasing number of cases where governments are limiting the autonomy of NOCs and International Federations. It is therefore very important that we communicate with our members and try to provide them with the tools to be able to combat this and the EOC Seminar provides us with an excellent platform to do just that.
“Good governance is a very important way for sports organisations to achieve autonomy. However, to successfully implement good governance is not without its challenges; we encourage all our NOCs to work at it because the benefits are certainly worth the effort.”
The second workshop that took place during the EOC Seminar today was dedicated to the Olympic and Paralympic Games as delegates heard reports on the Sochi 2014 Olympic Winter Games, the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, the Nanjing 2014 Youth Olympic Games and the Lillehammer 2016 Winter Youth Olympic Games.
