On the way to preventing, clarifying and punishing violence in sport, the German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB) and Athletes Germany eV published a 285-page legal report on Tuesday. The commissioned Frankfurt law firm ASD describes what the tasks of an independent Center for Safe Sport (ZfSS) could look like and what role it would have to play in interaction with the state and sport.
Behind the energetic commitment of officials and athletes lies the “vision” of a legal and organizational complete harmonization of the fight for the benefit of those affected. At the core of the legal opinion is the development of a “Safe Sport Code” (SSC) as a “cross-sports set of rules” that criminalizes physical, psychological and sexual violence as well as discrimination, neglect and omissions by sports associations.
With the implementation of the SSC, a uniform standard of conduct and a uniform procedure for sports criminal proceedings would be enforced. Among many other details, it regulated the distribution of tasks between the independent Center for Safe Sport and organized sport.
Sport freedoms
Associations and clubs remain primarily responsible for investigating and punishing violations, but the ZfSS, as a service provider, similar to the National Anti-Doping Agency (Nada), would offer to take over this work in principle and would be allowed to investigate on its own initiative if it found inaction . The lawyers commissioned recommend that the ZfSS issue the code.
However, organized sport must submit voluntarily. His autonomy, which is anchored in the Basic Law, gives him this freedom. When the anti-doping fight in Germany was supposed to be harmonized, it took ten years until NADA was set up. This was also due to the resistance of the associations.
Many needed more or less gentle pressure to enshrine the anti-doping code in their statutes, not to mention the reluctance to finance NADA. In top-class sport, however, the federal government could create incentives to accept the Safe Sport Code through funding guidelines. This opportunity does not exist in popular sports, where a football coach was recently sentenced to a long prison sentence for abuse in almost 160 cases.
This is one of the reasons why the legal opinion – at first glance – lists all conceivable and minimal possibilities for sport to participate in implementation. The ZfSS would offer “support in dealing with cases” to associations that do not recognize the code. “Without sport,” say the lawyers, “it won’t work.” Nor without the state.
A comment from Michael Reinsch, Berlin Published/Updated: Recommendations: 2 Michael Reinsch Published/Updated: Recommendations: 4 Jürgen Kalwa, New York Published/Updated: Recommendations: 6
In order for reports to be forwarded to the ZfSS in a legally secure manner, the legislature would have to create an exception with regard to data protection, as exists in the Anti-Doping Act. The legal opinion is now with the Federal Ministry of the Interior. The federal government had fixed the establishment of the ZfSS in the coalition agreement. ASD suggests a foundation as the legal form.
