The long months of investigation, more than 150 people interviewed and the thousands of pages of documents examined have finally yielded something. From a mouse or an earthquake? Only time will tell, but the report on the parliamentary commission of inquiry relating to “the identification of operational failures within French sports federations” will be made public this Tuesday morning by its president Béatrice Bellamy (Horizons) and its rapporteur Sabrina Sebaihi (Ecologist – NUPES).
A report, which Le Parisien-Aujourd’hui en France was able to consult this Monday, which draws on more than 250 pages a vitriolic portrait of the French sports movement considering it corrupted by the “culture of secrecy, lies and false testimony » and “not sufficiently accustomed to being accountable”.
The shortcomings of French sport are classified into three categories: “systemic failures”, relating to the governance of sport (institutions, finances, ethics, etc.); the “fight against violence and discrimination”, which points to an “omerta at all levels” particularly against sexist and sexual violence (SGBV), the long inaction of the sports movement in this area and the relative failure of the tools in place, notably “Signal-sports”; and finally the “fight against hatred and discrimination”, which concerns racism, homophobia and, in particular, the question of violence (physical or verbal) within stadiums.
A proposed “independent administrative authority responsible for sports ethics”
Among the main measures suggested by the report in its more than sixty recommendations is the call for the creation of an “independent administrative authority responsible for sports ethics”, which would have the mission of developing “minimum standards ” in terms of ethics and then proceed to “evaluation”, “control” and “sanction”, particularly financial, of “recalcitrant sports federations and organizations to adopt and implement such standards”. This authority would have prerogatives in all the themes addressed by this commission of inquiry, in particular violence and hate speech.
Generally speaking, the report calls for stricter control of sports institutions, aiming to fight against “in-betweenness” and for more transparency and accountability of the sports movement. Following the Games, he calls in particular for “carrying out a complete assessment of the effectiveness and relevance of the new governance of sport, in particular of the National Sports Agency”, which “cannot have as its sole criterion the performance of France at the Games.
At the same time, the report suggests “limiting the total duration of the functions of national technical director (DTN) within the same federation to eight years, in order to prevent the risks of conflicts of interest and collusion”.
Returning directly to the subject of Amélie Oudéa-Castéra’s remuneration when she was general director of the FFT, which could have earned her a report for perjury due to her “inaccurate presentation of public support for this federation”, and whose figures revealed by The world are presented in the report, the commission also proposes to establish “a remuneration scale both for the federations and for the organizing committees of major international sporting events” as well as to “make public the remunerations, the organization charts and the vacant positions “.
Signal-sports, “invisible” and “undersized”
Regarding the fight against violence, the report denounces such a “long denial” regarding, in particular, sexist and sexual violence (SGBV) in the world of sport. A “between ourselves on all levels” and failures on several scales for a situation which only recovered, imperfectly, from 2020. Among the dysfunctional tools, the report attacks the effectiveness of the Signal cell -Sports, the platform for reporting violence, “invisible” and “undersized”.
The report proposes conferring an “extended scope” of prerogatives to Signal-sports and placing it under the responsibility of the independent administrative authority that the deputies are calling for. We should, together, “remove the federations’ internal reporting tools”, which overshadow it, and “communicate massively on this platform and force all federations to do the same”.
The deputies also gave pride of place to the problems of management of volunteers in the world of sport and recommend “immediately setting up an inspection mission responsible for carrying out a precise and complete inventory, made public, of the control of honourability”. This would concern all sports educators, a sector which has experienced flaws in the past. This recommendation also provides for “supervising the profession of volunteer recruiter, subjecting them to the control of their good repute by legislative means” and “depriving the possibility of obtaining a license of people found guilty of particularly serious sexual abuse. »
On this point, the commission would like to “make sexual violence against minors imprescriptible” and “recognize traumatic amnesia within the framework of the criminal statute of limitations”. Likewise, often confronted with leaders who shift responsibility towards each other, the deputies call for the establishment of a “national commission to establish the facts of violence in sport” which will have to “identify the responsibilities of those who were aware of abuses and said nothing so that those whose management was failing could be removed from their responsibilities. »
