Shaping the future of European sport: a call for a multiannual financial framework that matches the challenges ahead

By Léo Vinet, European Affairs Officer, and Eva Jacomet, Head of European Affairs at the Sport and Citizenship Think Tank

On Monday 8 April 2025, to mark World Health Day, MEP Nina Carberry organised a conference at the European Parliament on the future of sport and physical activity in the EU. This meeting allowed Sport and Citizenship to gather the conclusions of Professor Niall Moyna, a specialist in clinical exercise physiology, to learn about the priorities advocated by MEPs Nina Carberry and Nikolina Brnjac and by the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Education, Youth, Culture and Sport (DG EAC), and to put forward its recommendations. With negotiations on the future multiannual financial framework (MFF) set to begin, which will determine the EU’s political and budgetary priorities for the next seven years, stakeholders in the sports sector are strongly reiterating the importance of securing ambitious funding to support physical activity, which is a cornerstone of public health, social inclusion and democratic resilience.

Physical activity and sport for all in Europe: a social and public health challenge in Europe

Niall Moyna, Professor of Clinical Exercise Physiology at Dublin City University, highlighted the links between health and regular physical activity and sport, recalling the WHO recommendations in this area. He also reiterated the crucial role of physical and sporting activities in preventing chronic diseases and extending our healthy life expectancy.

In light of this worrying finding, which is widely shared among the European scientific community, Nina Carberry and Violeta Birzniece, representative of DG EAC, emphasised the importance of developing accessibility and participation in regular physical activity among Europeans. Maintaining and increasing investment in sport therefore appears to be an effective and necessary means of reducing healthcare expenditure in Member States.

Particular attention must be paid to maintaining physical activity and sport throughout the lives of Europeans. In this regard, we advocate the development at European level of the concept of physical literacy, which aims to integrate physical activity or sport into daily routines from an early age. With an increasingly urban population, it is also crucial to rethink the way our cities are developing, to make them more suitable for physical activity and sport, a cause we are promoting through the PACTE+ project.

Another topic discussed at the event and highlighted by various speakers was the phenomenon of girls dropping out of sport during adolescence. Faced with the diversity of barriers that keep young girls away from sport, Sport and Citizenship is committed to a safe and more egalitarian sporting environment. It has submitted a European project involving four team sports that are still mainly practised by men (football, rugby, handball and basketball) to act to reduce the dropout rate among teenage girls.

Beyond its physical and mental health benefits, sport can also be a tool for the inclusion of marginalised populations, as Nikolina Brnjac, MEP and former Croatian Minister of Tourism and Sport, pointed out. However, she stressed that this role remains conditional on widespread access for all. In this sense, it is crucial to address regional disparities in Europe in terms of access to high-quality, local sports facilities. This is why Nikolina Brnjac and Nina Carberry advocate for the creation of European funds dedicated to financing the creation or renovation of sports facilities in Europe, an initiative that we support as it is key in reducing regional disparities within the Union in this area.

For a 2028-2034 multiannual financial framework that recognises the decisive role of sport in our societies

The role of sport in European society cannot be underestimated. It is a powerful lever for reducing healthcare expenditure, promoting gender equality, fostering social inclusion and strengthening democratic resilience in the face of contemporary challenges. However, to fully address these challenges, increased financial support is needed. In this regard, the ongoing discussions on the European Union’s future multiannual financial framework (MFF) are particularly important. This framework, established for a period of seven years, sets out the EU’s broad political and budgetary guidelines by determining the ceilings for authorised expenditure. The next MFF, covering the period 2028-2034, will be proposed by the European Commission in July 2025 before being voted on by the European Parliament and adopted unanimously by the Council of the EU.

This review is a unique opportunity for European decision-makers to increase the political and budgetary recognition of sport. This includes increasing the share of the Erasmus+ programme dedicated to sport, which is currently limited to only 1.9%, and opening new funding lines specifically dedicated to the development of local sports infrastructure. It is with this in mind that MEPs Nikolina Brnjac and Nina Carberry are calling for the creation of a funding line dedicated to sport within the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).

Sport and Citizenship calls on the European institutions not to underestimate the contribution of sport to building a more resilient, inclusive and sustainable society. Reducing funding for sports organisations and projects would be tantamount to denying their fundamental role in promoting mental and physical health, gender equality, social inclusion, environmental sustainability and economic growth.