dCrude resignation or expulsion again? The relationship between sport and the State seems to be in ruins. The German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB) abruptly ended its cooperation on Friday when it became aware of the Federal Ministry of the Interior's (BMI) draft for a sports financing law. The government wants parliament to approve it this year. On this basis the leading independent sports agency will be founded in 2025.

Under the plan, the association would transfer its right to control Olympic and non-Olympic sports and the ministry would transfer its budget to finance high-level sports, currently around 300 million euros a year. Both parties should be at eye level in the agency, as sport demands, therefore two supervisory bodies and therefore two general directors.

You can't talk about eye level. Sports complain about the veto power of the federal government in committees, the state points out that it is the payer. Organized sport fails to set an amount or parameter for funding high-level sport; the BMI invokes Parliament's right to determine the budget. Sport is deeply suspicious of the suggestion that top-level sport should extend corporate support.

Lightened fronts

Does the State want to stop financing elite sports in the long term? The idea that the Federal Administration Office was not only in charge of billing the funds, as was the case until now, but that it was entrusted with the processing of the funds, caused a kind of allergic shock. The DOSB predicts even more bureaucracy rather than less. At least the fronts have been clarified.

The association had already withdrawn from the joint sports development plan project in February. Lack of commitment and financing. The plan, which began with the exercise summit in late 2022, aimed to create federal responsibility for popular sports and should anchor sport and exercise in social areas such as health, education and integration.

The DOSB rejected the bill. This means that two of the four major sports policy projects stipulated by the Traffic Light Government in its coalition agreement have failed. So far, two expulsions and one resignation have marked the most spectacular low points in the relationship between the DOSB and the state.

In April 2018, Interior Minister Horst Seehofer temporarily dismissed the director of the sports department, Gerhard Böhm, although this gave the impression that he was the then president of the DOSB. Alfons Hormann, his friend from the CSU party, does personnel politics at the Ministry of the Interior. It was said that only a new beginning in the staff could save the relationship between the ministry and sports.

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Four years later, after Nancy Faeser took office, Böhm's successor, Beate Lohmann, suffered the same fate. Meanwhile, Hörmann had resigned; His successor Thomas Weikert and his president Torsten Burmester had a lot of work to do in Berlin when they took office. That doesn't seem to have worked.

Germany's largest lobby organization is not being sufficiently heard in political Berlin, not even in the SPD-led Interior Ministry, from which Burmester moved as a young man to Schröder's Chancellery. Both he and Weikert do not hide their membership in the SPD.

In the last two years alone, a total of nine working groups have participated in the sports development plan and the reform of elite sports. It will soon be ten years since the Minister of the Interior Thomas de Maiziere He began the reform of elite sport with the demand for a third more medals in the Olympic Games. A decade of workers face failed reforms. Despite the effort and the creation of networks between political parties, the DOSB is surprised by the bill. Did you really believe that your right to distribute fiscal resources could be annulled?

The Ministry of the Interior is surprised by the content of the DOSB's criticism and its severity. In a statement, the house thanked the “intensive and trusting process between the federal government, the states and organized sports,” as if it were an enchantment. It is said that the independence of the sports agency is already expressed in its legal form of public law foundation. In addition, the necessary flexibility has been created with the possibility of multidisciplinary and multi-year financing.

Suggestions are expected on the topic of debureaucratization. However, the ministry writes, independence has limits when it comes to the strategic direction of top-level sport funding. This is done by the board of directors, in which the federal government and parliament have a majority with nine seats. Sports dominate the sports advisory council.

Over the weekend, the Home Office sweetened its response to the sport's protest. The press release was supplemented by text saying that the agency's decisions should be based on internal and independent sports knowledge.
The balance of power cannot come as a surprise for sport after last year's interventions by the Federal Audit Office and the Bundestag Budget Committee. The BMI describes it dryly: “Significant federal influence on the board of directors is (…) essential because the sports agency only allocates federal funds.”