With his criticism of the government, the opposition politician Stephan Mayer initially held back when the parliament discussed the 15th sports report of the federal government on Thursday. He spoke of the "golden years of Germany's sports policy" and the temptation to praise the fact that in the years 2018 to 2021 more money than ever before had flowed into top-class sport, the increase in sports funding had never been steeper, so many new projects had never been started. The CSU deputy renounced the punchline of his joke. During the reporting period, he was Parliamentary State Secretary in the Ministry of the Interior and thus responsible for sports policy under Interior Minister Horst Seehofer of the CSU.
Michael Reinsch
Correspondent for sports in Berlin.
- Follow I follow
Mayer expressly agreed with Interior Minister Nancy Faeser on behalf of his parliamentary group for her repeated criticism of the recommendation of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to allow Russian athletes back into international sports. He would have liked a similarly clear stance from the German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB), said Mayer and accused him of having messed around and only got the curve at the last moment.
What he had to criticize, in addition to the fact that the minister had worn the one-love armband forbidden to the team at the World Cup in Qatar, can be found in the sports report, if at all, in the future tense. Mayer therefore took the coalition agreement as a yardstick and, as was his task as the first speaker of the opposition, settled accounts with the sports policy of the traffic light coalition. The peak of movement: "a blow in the water". The 25 million euros for the "restart" of the 87,000 sports clubs after the pandemic: "bungled" and surpassed by the Free State of Bavaria alone with 40 million euros. The commendable centre for Safe Sport: the continuation of the project started by the grand coalition together with Mayer. The independent agency for the financing of elite sport: rejected by the countries and not in the interest of the legislator. The Sports Promotion Act: strangling ankle bracelets.
There is a lack of halls and squares, supervisors
Nancy Faeser was the first speaker in this first, hour-long parliamentary debate on the occasion of the sports report: "The traffic light gets Germany moving." Sport is an important part of holistic education. However, their finding that clubs are losing members and revenue, that there is a lack of coaches and trainers, is only half true. These days, the state sports federations are not only reporting pleasing growth figures, but even such a rush that many clubs have waiting lists because halls and places and supervisors are missing. Berlin took the top position on Thursday, the day of the parliamentary debate: with an increase of 6.6 percent to almost 630,000 members, which is well above the pre-pandemic level. Women aged 19 to 26 account for the greatest growth with 16.3 percent and women from 27 to 40 years with 9.7 percent. Almost exactly one third of the memberships in Berlin's sports clubs are now female. The two Bundesliga football clubs Union (up 21 percent to 49,000) and Hertha (13/45,000) have the strongest influx in the capital.
The construction and renovation of sports facilities take up only two pages of the 226 pages of sports report, complained André Hahn of the Left Party. For sports facilities owned by the clubs – a relief for the public sector – the traffic light has not yet created any funding. After all, several speakers expressed their appreciation for voluntary commitment in sport. "Thanks, guys. Without you, everything would come to a standstill," shouted Green Party member Tina Winklmann. "You make the sport something very special," praised Philipp Hartewig (FDP).
Analysis of failure required
In the sports report, the government calls for "more coherence between public funding and the potential for medals and finals at the Olympic and Paralympic Games". Although the federal government has increased its funding to 373 million euros (as of 2022), there has been a constant downward trend at the Summer Olympics since Barcelona 1992 with 82 medals (Tokyo 2022: 37).
The government described the Olympic Games as a "great idea" and claims to have been invited by the International Olympic Committee to apply. But it also calls for an analysis of the failure of seven unsuccessful attempts – most recently with the presentation of summer games on the Rhine and Ruhr, which the DOSB and the federal government treated as a private initiative. The umbrella organization of sports has long since set up a six-member department for the Olympic bid and is planning a referendum on 1 September 2024 – the outcome of which will probably be judged in the next sports report of the Federal Government.