“The social sustainability of sports facilities is about facilitating social relations, bringing all groups in society to the facilities. Sports facilities should also support the capacity of current and future generations to create healthy and liveable communities. This requires access to and use of sports facilities by all groups in society. Furthermore, sustainable funding models for sports facilities are essential to make them affordable and financially sustainable for the future. In addition, attention should be paid to the more topical areas to which social sustainability is often linked: sustainability itself (e.g. the climate).”
This is a quote from the 2025 White Paper on Social Sustainability and Sports Facilities, a key deliverable of the Council of Europe’s Enlarged Partial Agreement on Sport (EPAS)’s work on the mapping of sports facilities, as set forth in the EPAS Strategy 2024-2025.
The White Paper showcases examples of existing knowledge on social sustainability and sports facilities. It also ties in with current policy frameworks such as the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and the European Green Deal and uses the European Sports Charter as a starting point. This new publication is the result of ongoing co-operation between the Council of Europe and the Mulier Institute.
In the context of this co-operation, four meetings on the Mapping of Sports Facilities have been organised since 2021, bringing together researchers, policy-making experts and representatives of the sports movement.
The fourth meeting took place on 12 September 2025 in hybrid format (Strasbourg, France and online) and focused on social sustainability and sports facilities – an essential topic to tackle due to the current lack of extensive work mapping the situation in this area as well as there being no uniform over-arching policy across EPAS member states either for the collection of data in this area or best practice work.
The objectives of the meeting were to share information on the policy relevance of sports facilities and their contribution to social sustainability; gain insights into current mapping work and key indicators; learn more about the different practices pertaining to social sustainability and sports facilities; and identify solutions to keep sports facilities affordable for all groups in society and thus more inclusive – in the spirit of sport for all, a key principle set out in the European Sports Charter.
The topic of social sustainability and sports facilities will remain high on the upcoming EPAS agenda, namely with the promotion of the newly published White Paper. The next Mapping of Sports Facilities meeting, to be held in 2026, will focus on equal access to sports facilities.
@CoE_Sports, 