Brussels, 01/09/2000 (Agence Europe) - During its plenary session next week in Strasbourg, the European Parliament will, on Thursday, examine the report by Teresa Zabell (EPP, Spain) on the Commission's communication to the Council concerning a Community support plan to combat doping in sport. The report notes that the use of doping products is not just restricted to professional sport, but is also widely spread in amateur sports (keep fit, body building, etc.). The use of doping substances can therefore be assimilated to a public health problem and to a new form of drug dependency, which presents a serious threat to the ethics of sport. The Commission is invited to examine the problem of doping under the new framework action programme on public health, and to intensify, in the Fifth Framework Programme, research on substances used for doping, detection methods, the effect on health of the use of performance enhancing products and the limits of natural hormones produced by the human body.
The report invites the Commission and the Member States to encourage sports federations to demand that athletes undergo a compulsory medical test before being granted a license from a federation. The Commission is also invited to submit a proposal to the Parliament and Council as soon as possible in order to make official the active and effective participation of the Community in the work of the World Anti-Doping Agency. The agency should examine whether medicinal products for the treatment of benign infections such as the common cold should be included on the list of doping products. The Commission is expected to convene, in liaison with the Council of Europe and by 1 April 2001 at the latest, a conference for establishing a code of good conduct in sport.
The report by Ms Zabell (herself several times European and world sailing champion) recalls, moreover, that recent rulings by the European Court of Justice have confirmed that the specific characteristics of sport authorise special treatment in the application of Community legislation and prove the need for a legal base specific to sport in the EU Treaty. Ms Zabell calls for such a legal base to be included in order to allow Community action in the field of sport.