Will the EU win the Olympics? About a game that is better not to play

Deutsch

By Manuel Müller

“The Olympic Games are competitions between athletes in individual or team events and not between countries.”

Olympic Charter, Rule 6 (1).

Also at Euronews, the EU is at the top of the medals table now.

The European Commission has come up with something special for the Paris Olympics: the website teameurope2024.eu, which features a “European Medals Counter” that adds up the medals won by athletes from all EU member states under the label “Team Europe”. The message is clear, and has been made explicit in the past by pro-European activists such as the Young European Federalists: When the EU is seen as a single entity, rather than divided into 27 member states, it tops the medals table – ahead of China, Japan, Britain or the US.

This is obviously meant in good spirit, to express European community and to make friends of European integration happy. But does it also make sense? Here are three reasons why it is better not to participate in such a medal counting game.

EU activities focus on grassroots sport

Firstly: Yes, there is an EU sports policy, and pointing this out is one of the legitimate purposes of the “Team Europe” website. However, it has very little to do with the Olympics. Instead, the focus of EU activities is clearly on grassroots sport. Key objectives include “enhancing the societal role of sport”, “promoting public health through physical activity” and “boosting volunteer activities”.

In terms of contributions to the Olympic Games, the EU White Paper on Sport only mentions explicitly “the on-going process of concluding visa facilitation agreements with third countries and the consolidation of the visa regime applicable to members of the Olympic family” as well as the promotion of a “structured dialogue” between the various sports federations and organisations, in particular through the annual EU Sport Forum. The EU also contributes to the fight against doping and money laundering in sport and to security at major international sporting events.

Elite sport is supported by national-level programmes

In the EU’s 2023 budget, the amount earmarked for sport policy under the Erasmus+ programme is just under €70 million, which was mainly used to support “learning mobility of sport staff, and cooperation […] at the level of sport organisations and sport policies”. A few million more have been earmarked for things like “monitoring and coaching, through sports, of youngsters at risk of radicalisation”, “building investigative capacity to better fight doping in sport in Europe” and the “Sport for People and Planet” sustainability programme.

By contrast, the promotion of elite sport, as seen at the Olympic Games, is the responsibility of the member states, each of which has its own national programmes for this. In Germany, for example, the federal government alone spent more than €95 million on subsidies to the national Olympic sports associations in 2023. On top of that, there was a double-digit million euro figure for elite sports infrastructure – and, of course, the support of individual athletes who are employed and financed as “sports officials” by the customs authority, the police or the military. This higher budget also means that national governments have more power to make substantive decisions, for example on which sports to support most.

The organisation of sports federations is primarily national, too

In addition, the self-organisation of sport – through the sports federations and the National Olympic Committees (NOCs) – takes place primarily at national level, too. The various NOCs are in dialogue with each other and even have a European umbrella organisation. However, it is telling that the name of this organisation is “European Olympic Committees” in the plural. In fact, European elite sport is much less supranationally organised than European politics.

This, in turn, has to do with the rules and regulations of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which decides which athletes may take part in the Olympic Games. According to Rule 6 and Rule 27 (7.2) of the Olympic Charter, it is the National Olympic Committees that select the participating athletes. However, they are bound by certain requirements. For example, the participants must be citizens of the NOC’s country, they have to meet certain performance criteria set by the international federation of their respective discipline, and, above all, each NOC may enter a maximum of one team per team event and three athletes per individual event.

A real “Team Europe” would have far fewer Olympic participants

And this is the second reason why adding up “European” Olympic medals makes little sense. If elite sport were indeed organised on an EU-wide basis, with a joint NOC for all EU member states, far fewer athletes from Europe would be allowed to take part in the Games. A common “Team Europe” would therefore have far fewer chances of winning medals than the 27 national teams of the member states put together.

This is most evident in team sports: For example, when Italy won gold, France silver and Poland bronze in the women’s team épée fencing competition recently, this was only possible because each of these countries entered its own team at the Olympics. The USA and China, on the other hand, can only enter one team each – and can therefore only win one medal each, even in sports in which they completely dominate the rest of the world.

More publicity stunt than sportsmanship

Celebrating being at the top of a global ranking while hiding the fact that this position is only due to very different starting conditions – should the EU really be so needy as to do this? In any case, it looks more like a cheap publicity stunt than an expression of Olympic sportsmanship.

Here is the third and perhaps most important argument against the EU’s medal table tricks: They are part of a problematic development in which major sporting events – and the Olympics in particular – are increasingly being politicised as competitions between nations and exploited by governments for propaganda purposes.

The medal table competition is fuelling nationalism

Of course, this development is nothing new. Especially during the Cold War, the Olympic Games were seen on both sides of the Iron Curtain as a symbolic confrontation in the struggle between ideological systems. Since the self-organisation of the International Olympic Movement is so strongly structured along nation-state lines, a certain degree of political nationalism is probably inevitable. And with a little good will, it is certainly understandable that politicians also see the Games as a competition between the different national sports funding systems and like to adorn themselves in public with the successes of “their” athletes.

But you don’t have to look far to see the dark side of this, too: When Russia or China (or East and West Germany during the Cold War) have run state-sponsored doping programmes for years, and may still be doing so today, they put national prestige before the health of their athletes – who, especially in authoritarian regimes, often have limited opportunities to escape such programmes. Of course, the European Commission cannot be accused of condoning such practices. But by fuelling the competition for the top spot in the medals table, its communication policy contributes to an atmosphere in which it is not surprising that other state actors will resort to dirtier means than mere accounting tricks.

“Imagine …”

This is all the more annoying as the EU was founded with the aim of overcoming nationalism and its problematic excesses. With their universal humanist approach, the European and the Olympic idea have actually a lot in common. After all, according to the preamble to the Olympic Charter, Olympism is based on the “respect for internationally recognised human rights and universal fundamental ethical principles” and aims to “place sport at the service of the harmonious development of humankind, with a view to promoting a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity”.

The Olympics could be a celebration of human ability, an opportunity to revel in what we are capable of as a species – regardless of our background or nationality. “Imagine there’s no countries,” French singer Juliette Armanet sang an old John Lennon hit at the opening ceremony in Paris, “it isn’t hard to do”. Instead of posing as a nation state by way of a self-made medal table, the EU should remember its greatest strength: imagining a world in which, whether in sport or in politics, people and not states are at the centre.

Picture: Medals table: Euronews, via Twitter.