Eduard Novak, at mandate's end: Disappearance of Sports Ministry - drastic measure.
Eduard Novak told a Thursday's press conference organized on the occasion of the end of his mandate of the Minister of Sports, that the disappearance of the Ministry of Sports represents a drastic measure in the context in which Romania is a "sick nation", having a high percentage of obesity among the population and a very small number of sports practitioners, told Agerpres.
He considers that the transformation of the Ministry of Sports into a sports agency is a mistake made within the government reform, disagreeing with the statement "politics buries sport".
"It was an honor to lead Romanian sports for two and a half years as long as this mandate was. When I took over, I wanted to be the minister who brings something new, who is not afraid to enter into internal issues of the federations and in creating a pragmatic funding system based on performance. I regret that after all our efforts to reposition sport as a national priority, sport is stuck in this reorganization and it is losing power, visibility and importance on the eve of the Olympic Games from Paris 2024," added Novak.
The National Strategy for Sport represents the most important achievement of its mandate. "The first achievement is the National Strategy for Sport, a historic document, which will be the recipe for the success of Romanian sport if it is applied. I will personally monitor how this document will be implemented", he explained.
The minister emphasized that the thing that frustrates him the most is that he did not manage to complete the decentralization, more precisely the transfer of the sports bases from the ministry to the local authorities.
Eduard Novak does not see a bright future for Romanian sports after the reorganization of the ministry into an agency.
"I sat and thought when the future president or director of the Sports Agency will go to an external delegation, who will be his counterpart? All over the world, all over Europe, sport has a ministry... I don't know the country with a sports agency, that's why I say that I don't know who will be the counterpart of the future president. So we lose a lot. I would like the sports budget to remain in the future at least the same as today. It's possible, but we'll see who will the Sports Agency belong to, the Ministry of the Family or to the General Secretariat of the Government, I still don't know concretely. But I don't see a very bright future for sports. The athletes who bring medals to Romania today have all the conditions and I think that will remain. They to have confidence that whoever comes here will support them. We will also make sure at the political level that they don't have problems," said Novak, appointed Minister of Sports in December 2020.
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