Frankfurt/Main – Sport in Germany should become less violent. The German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB) and Athletes Germany published a legal opinion on the establishment of the planned Center for Safe Sport (ZfSS) as well as the associated draft of a Safe Sport Code (SSC).
This code is intended to regulate prohibited actions and grievances in organized sport and to give the center the right to demand reappraisal processes under certain conditions – similar to the code in the fight against doping.
At the initiative of the Federal Ministry of the Interior and Community, a dialogue to create the Center for Safe Sport was started at the end of 2022. In addition to the creation of the Safe Sport Code, the commissioned report was primarily intended to clarify legal and organizational questions that arose in the course of this dialogue. “The report should now form the basis for further discussions and decision-making in the development process of the independent Center for Safe Sport,” said Michaela Röhrbein, Director of Sports Development at the DOSB.
Sports clubs should join voluntarily
The ZfSS is scheduled to go into regular operation in 2026 and will cost around six million euros annually. The code developed in the report serves as a binding set of rules and defines five prohibited actions: physical violence, psychological violence, sexual violence, discrimination and neglect.
The report also suggests what key steps in sports criminal proceedings could look like. Various scenarios for incoming reports as well as specific processes for investigation, sanction and appeal procedures are taken into account. The prerequisite is that the sports organizations accept the rules and join the regulatory system, according to the statement from the Athletes Germany Association. This binding effect must be established in a next step.
In the opinion of the umbrella organization, the state must now create certain framework conditions so that the ZfSS can carry out its tasks. According to the report, this includes creating a legally secure basis for data processing by the ZfSS and sports organizations.