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Group photo for the participants to the AIPS Europe Media Summit in visit to the Hungarian Parliament in Budapest on March 27, 2017. Holding the AIPS Historical Book in the center Mr. Béla Dankó, Member of the Hungarian Parliament.
BUDAPEST, March 27, 2017 – The first AIPS Europe Media Summit kicked off this morning in Budapest with an official visit to the Hungarian Parliament. This followed an eve-of-summit event, led by the International Judo Federation (IJF) and its president Marius Vizer, of a unique ‘Welcome Dinner’ on a Danube cruise.
THE PARLIAMENT The media summit was attended by 78 sports journalist delegates from 31 European countries at the invitation of the Hungarian Sport Writers Association led by György Szöllosi from March 26-29.
An official visit to the Hungarian Parliament, the third biggest parliament building in the world after Bucharest and Buenos Aires, was very much appreciated by the present colleagues as well as the short speech gave by Mr Béla Dankó, Member of the Hungarian Parliament who described the current situation of sports and football in the central European state.
THE CHALLENGES IN HUNGARY “There has been a lot of development in the last six years in the world of sport here in Hungary - I am pretty much involved in football where the situation really needed to care of," said Mr Dankó before receiving a copy of the AIPS history book from of AIPS Europe president, Ioannis Daras.
He added: "Nowadays families do not enough money for their children to practise sports so the clubs are the ones spending more money for them.
"It is also necessary to admit that is becoming more and more challenging to involve the kids in sport because of the digital attractivity represented by social media and computer games today.”
Despite this the parliament had decided to invest in redeveloping infrastructure and facilities for football in all of Hungary which had brought significant results since 2010.
Mr Danko continued: “After the 1990 democratic changes sport wasn’t the priority as much as houses, streets or metro stations.
"But in the last six years we laid more than 1000 football pitches, we completed the reconstruction of 11 first and second division stadiums and we keep on following the road map having in mind the idea that sports culture come first.”
DARAS TO END HIS PRESIDENCY At the beginning of this morning meeting AIPS Europe president Ioannis Daras thanked his colleagues after his double-terme experience guiding the European sports journalists' body.
He said: "In this long period within this family I’ve learned so many things, having had the opportunity to meet and speak with famous journalists and colleagues, but above all friends.
"Thank you for your trust and friendships, from 2001 in Toronto until now. I want to mention especially all those former presidents of AIPS Europe who were such important models for me during this exciting experience.
"We have done many things together, from the fight for the media rights within the European Parliament to all the new educational programmes we have studied arriving to this Media Summit that has overcome all of our expections thanks to the amazing job of the Hungarian national association.
"I hope to keep on serving you as an AIPS vice-president, expressing my wish that, as Europe, we will be united, as European countries, in support to vote for the best colleagues for the new AIPS Executive Committee which will need to confront so many important challenges in the next years."
Maria Pia Beltran, AIPS Media in Budapest
