VIDEO | Molea (Fi): “I am running to save grassroots sport from a distracted EU”
Molea from Forlì, candidate in the north-east constituency, wants to bring to Europe his wealth of experience first as a sports manager and then as a 'technical' politician in the sector
BOLOGNA – A vote to defend grassroots sport and avoid the risk of seeing 100,000 sports associations disappear due to inadequate laws. This is the appeal that Bruno Molea, president of Aics and candidate for the European elections for the European People’s Party in the ranks of Forza Italia, addresses voters at the final event of the electoral campaign in Emilia-Romagna, which will take place was held last night in Bologna at Camplus Bononia in the presence of the president of Noi Moderati Maurizio Lupi.
Molea from Forlì, candidate in the north-east constituency, wants to bring to Europe his wealth of experience first as a sports manager and then as a ‘technical’ politician in the sector, and draws up a balance sheet a few days before the call to the polls on the 8th -June 9th. “It was a real 40-day marathon, it’s a shame that it wasn’t 42 otherwise we would have equaled the sporting marathon – jokes Molea – we met thousands of people, I spoke to many people from this very large constituency”.
To the people, he continues, “I brought to everyone my main themes, those that I have brought to Italy for 42 years as my objectives of political work in the world of sport and that I have brought to Europe for ten years”. Molea’s mission is to “defend sports clubs, especially grassroots sports clubs, which are fundamental: because they offer the social fabric of the country a whole series of good practices and social policy activities which are functional to maintaining optimal levels of an organized civil society”.
Small sports clubs, insists Molea, “have an incredible role especially for young people”.
But thanks to a European policy “little aware of the consequences it determines”, in this period “between the admission of sports clubs to the VAT regime, albeit exempt, and on the other hand the sacrosanct recognition of sports workers, who in any case has aggravated the world of basic sport by identifying almost 100,000 new businesses, this world is suffering in a particular way and unfortunately risks disappearing in some places”, is the alarm raised by Molea.
“Only by working hard at a political level, has it been possible to introduce corrective measures that are gradually adjusting the situation, such as the increase in flat-rate reimbursements for sports volunteers which has just saved an entire class of pensioners and very young people who pass their free time to support sports associations and clubs”. For this reason “we absolutely must defend this role in Europe, that of the effects of the third sector, which in Italy is an essential tool for combining good policies in Italian civil society”.
In this sense, Molea finds that in Europe “there is not a great sensitivity when one proceeds to legislate in this sense, when for example it imposes on Italy, which then risks infringement, the recognition of the sports work or VAT numbers for sports clubs”. For this reason, according to the number one of Aics “bringing the voice of a competent person who has been involved in sports policy for forty years, also in Europe, is functional and above all useful to ensure that situations of this kind do not happen again”.