EHF Executive Committee meets in Denmark

Latest meeting took place on the fringes of the Women’s EHF EURO 2020 Qualifiers draw and Conference for Secretaries General in Copenhagen, Denmark

The members of the EHF Executive Committee met in Copenhagen on 4/5 April 2019 for their 145th meeting.

Taking place parallel to the Conference for Secretaries General and on the fringes of the Women’s EHF EURO 2020 Qualifiers, the meeting also provided an opportunity for an exchange of opinions and information with national federation representatives.

On the agenda were a range of topics and decisions, with the Executive also receiving reports from the most recent meetings of the federation’s various internal bodies, boards and stakeholder groups.

Women’s EHF EURO: 24 from 2024

The Women’s EHF EURO will be played with 24 teams following the decision to expand the event from 2024.

The change brings the final tournament of Europe’s top women’s handball event in line with the men’s competition, which will be played with 24 teams from 2020 as Sweden, Austria and Norway host the event.

National federations will subsequently be invited to bid for the 2024 event with joint bids from different federations also to be welcomed.

In a next step an adaptation of the qualification system will also be necessary.

More information can be found on eurohandball.com>>

2020 YAC events confirmed

Based on the recommendation of the Competitions Commission, the following hosts were confirmed for the 2020 series of younger age category events:

M18 EHF EURO 2020

Slovenia – Celje

M18 EHF Championship 2020

Bulgaria – Burgas
North Macedonia – Skopje
Montenegro – Podgorica

M20 EHF EURO 2020 (joint hosting of event)

Austria – Innsbruck and Italy – Brixen

M20 EHF Championship 2020

Latvia – Riga
Bosnia Herzegovina – Bugojno

New structure for EHF officiating

A revamp of the federation’s officiating operations was agreed.

The changes will see a further development of the functions of the EHF Competitions Department in the administration of the officiating system and will include the nomination of officials for club and national team matches.

Additionally, an expanded network of refereeing experts will be used for the different tasks in the evaluation of refereeing performance.

The changes will be implemented from 1 July 2019 and ahead of the new club season.

Media/marketing agreement 2020+

An update was provided on the progress with the new media and marketing partnership from 2020 with Infront and DAZN.

This included a report on the joint meeting of the Strategy Committee and Steering Board held on 1 April 2020 at the Infront headquarters in Zug, Switzerland on 1 April 2019.

The Executive Committee was also informed about the creation of a new ‘EHF/M Hub’ within the EHF Office, acting as a coordination body between the EHF and EHF Marketing GmbH as preparations for the start of the new contract continue.

An update will be provided to national federations at the Conference of Presidents on Saturday, 1 June in Cologne ahead of the semi-finals of the VELUX EHF FINAL4.

IHF New Rules Working Group

Information was provided on the IHF New Rules Working Group and the proposals put forward by the EHF.

The federation is represented on the working group by Dragan Nachevski, member responsible for refereeing on the Competitions Commission, and Helmut Höritsch, Senior Manager Education and Development at the EHF Office.

Anti-doping

In a report from the EHF Anti-doping Unit, it was confirmed that all testing carried out this season across clubs competitions and the Men’s EHF EURO 2022 Qualifiers (phase 1) had been returned negative.

Also, on the basis of a recommendation from the Legal Delegation, an intensification of the federation’s anti-doping education programmes for young athletes was unanimously supported.

Smart Project approved

A new development project in Ukraine was approved under the SMART programme.

Next meeting

The next meeting of the EHF Executive Committee will take place on 27/28 June 2019 in Vienna ahead of the Men’s EHF EURO 2020 final tournament draw.