What does the ESC aim to do?

The ESC provides the framework for sports policy to which all European countries have to put their name.

Governments have committed themselves to providing everyone with opportunities to practice sport under well-defined conditions. Sport must be :

• accessible to everybody;
• available for children and young people in particular;
• healthy and safe, fair and tolerant, building on high ethical values;
• capable of fostering personal self-fulfilment at all levels;
• respectful of the environment;
• protective of human dignity;
• against any kind of exploitation of those engaged in sport.

  Achievements

Governments have certain clear overall responsibilities in the field of sport, and the ESC has achieved three essential prerequisites:

• to lay down stable parameters within which sports policies can develop;
• to lay down common framework and basic principles for national sports policies;
• to provide the necessary balance between governmental and non-governmental action and to ensure the complementarity of responsibilities between them.

The ESC was adopted in 1992 by the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers.

It was revised in 2001 and again in 2021. The latest revision process is detailed here:

Revision process of the European Sports Charter