With empty pockets you can easily discuss beautiful and important topics. Like sports. If everyone agrees, even better. Finally, you part happily without your own words or those of the other person having any consequences. What a stage for politicians.
This is how you have to imagine the second movement summit, to which Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser from the SPD invited on Tuesday in the dome hall of the historic Olympic site in Berlin. Not only party friends from near and far came, fellow campaigners in the traffic light coalition, who could be expected to strongly contradict the impression of the failure of Faeser’s sports policy.
Even the interior ministers of the Union-governed Free States of Bavaria and Saxony, Joachim Herrmann, chairman of the Conference of Sports Ministers, and Armin Schuster, came, avowed opposition.
“Exercise and Health”
Herrmann then also criticized the fact that two processes had arisen unnecessarily since the first movement summit; He meant the inconclusive one by Faeser, which the German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB) rejects as a kind of non-binding wish list, and that by Health Minister Karl Lauterbach, which led to a consensus paper entitled “Round Table for Movement and Health”.
Herrmann said that the draft for a sports funding law, which was also rejected by organized sports, made the disappointment even greater. “This won’t work without money,” he said: “We’re treading water as long as clear decisions can’t be made.” In contrast to the disgruntled state sports associations, Herrmann was at least present.
His coming speaks even more than the “we” in his speech for a cross-party consensus that, unlike before, the federal government’s competence and responsibility should not only be concentrated on the top level of sport, the representation of Germany at the Olympic Games. “We want to follow words with actions,” shouted Herrmann: “The countries are ready for this.”
Great unity
Herrmann’s party colleague, CSU MP Stephan Mayer, the sports policy spokesman for the Union factions in the Bundestag, explained with pleasure how much the principle of hope is inherent in this willingness. Not a single euro is allocated to the sports development plan in the current budget, he explained, and since ninety percent of its content concerns states and municipalities, the calculation is made here without the landlord. There are enough discussion formats, he criticized, and demanded: “It’s about implementing them.”
There is great agreement on what Faeser summarized in five points: strengthening voluntary commitment, recognizing lack of exercise as a health risk and a social problem that needs to be combated, and promoting popular and health sports, be it with the Olympics and Paralympics Playing in the country, as well as the creation of sports and exercise spaces in town and country. “If we promote sport, we also promote the values of democracy and cohesion,” said Faeser.
She promised to advocate for financial resources for the sports development plan, which the federal government is now developing alone. She didn’t mention which year’s budget she meant; Taking election forecasts into account, it should no longer have any government plans beyond 2025.
Jeans and sports shoes
Her cabinet colleague Lauterbach, who slipped into the training jacket, jeans and sports shoes that are so popular with Berlin hipsters for the photo session, routinely delivered his lecture about sport as the best medicine for cardiovascular weakness, cancer and dementia and romanticized what his house had planned Federal Institute for Prevention and Education in Medicine becomes a control center for the promotion of sport and exercise.
A comment from Michael Reinsch, Berlin Published/Updated: Recommendations: 2 Michael Reinsch, Glasgow Published/Updated: Recommendations: 5 Michael Reinsch Published/Updated: Recommendations: 4
Sport is not the most beautiful thing in the world, said pediatrician and DOSB Vice President Kerstin Holze. She did not reject the government’s draft because of the thematic content, which she liked to list: social cohesion, promoting democracy, inclusion, integration and health promotion.
She rejects the paper, as she made clear, because it lacks responsibilities, resources and commitments. “We need a common realignment of top-class sport and sports development,” she cried: “We need a clear, fundamental and binding commitment in words, but also in deeds, for sport for everyone by everyone.”
