This following texts combine the revised and annotated version of the welcome speech and Epilogue by Jacob Kornbeck held at the Congress for Harmonisation of Doping Policies in European Sports for Athletes with Disabilities, 31st August - 1st September 2002, Bratislava, organised by the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) and co-financed by the European Commission as pilot project 20/24 (2001-2002).

Under last year's Call for Proposals, the European Paralympic Committee won a contract with a view to prepare and organise this Congress. Judging from EPC's project proposal, it promises to be an interesting event: The question of how best to align anti-doping work targeting disabled sportspersons will be discussed here by experts and stakeholders alike.

It was decided to include the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) in this work and to base large parts of our discussions on WADA's draft World Anti-Doping Code. The young Agency and its emerging Code have started many discussions which we would probably not have imagined just a year ago. The draft Code was presented to the public after the application to hold this event had been lodged and has become a major topic within the international community of anti-doping work. I am please that the organisers decided to include the Code it in this Congress, knowing very well both the opportunities and the challenges which this approach involves.

The objective is indeed ambitious: to develop a "Declaration of Commitment" which should act as a model for future co-operation.

Paralympic versus Olympic sports

In this context, disabled sports are an important alternative and for someone like me, who knows as much - or as little - as the average citizen about them, sports for the disabled allow us to take a fresh look at sport. Sometimes, it looks like sports which haven't - yet - lost their innocence. We know that, alas, this is not always true, as recent positive cases in doping controls performed on Paralympic athletes have shown. Still, Paralympic sports are different and provide stimulating inspiration. Today and tomorrow we shall look into the specific paralympic doping issue.

Mainstreaming and inclusiveness in Paralympics and anti-doping policy

With these ideas in mind, I would like to underline the need for mainstreaming. For despite the specificity of the questions raised here, we must bear in mind the embeddedness of disabled people in society and, likewise, of disabled sports within the totality of sports.

Mainstreaming is an important goal in politics targeting the disabled. Mainstreaming is also a matter of urgency in international anti-doping work as it strives for the unity of lists, rules, procedures and practices. The presence of so many WADA representatives here - representing an Agency which does not have a mandate specifically for disabled sports - should be a sign, I think, that the Congress, despite its focus on Paralympics, refuses to glide into secludedness and forget the larger context.

Mainstreaming is in the interest of all. Both disability policies and anti-doping policies should aim to be truly universal. Mainstreaming is also in the interest of sport if it wants to represent most, or all of society. In the words of B. Sevelius (2000), 'Sport cannot speak of "sport as an important part of society" if we have no intention to present, offer and develop sport as an activity available to most of the people' (pp. 6). This quote represents the common interest of disability policies, anti-doping policies and sport in general in striving for inclusiveness and resisting all tendencies towards seclusion, sectarianism and segregation.

With respect to structural differences, the much higher levels of professionalisation and commercialisation in able-bodied sports mean that the 'Play the Game' argument does not suffice to legitimise serious sanctions against doping. One consultancy report commissioned by the European Commission, based on a review of literature into the history of doping, pointed to professionalisation and commercialisation as the main factors creating a doping-prone environment (KPMG, 2002). In this respect, differences between Paralympics and Olympics should be quite evident.

Then to ideological differences. In Workshop No. 4, dealing essentially with Article 4, section 1, of the draft Code (Acceptance of the Code - see figure 1) - the workshop which I participated in - I heard very few critical voices, indeed sometimes I had the feeling that I was playing the Devil's advocate with my observations, and I heard the argument that 'those who won't accept the Code don't have to participate' [not a verbatim quote]. Many able-bodied athletes are workers and their financial and socio-cultural welfare is seriously affected by sanctions which may interrupt their careers or, in some disciplines, even bring them to an end. In a number of jurisdictions, these implications are likely to prompt public authorities to take a very sceptical stance towards the Code. I reckon that there are important differences between public authorities - the side which I know best - and sports organisations, but it also seems that the degree of feasibility within Paralympics, as opposed to Olympics, might be different. In any case, I would recommend that the Paralympic movement, despite its enthusiasm, which I admire, keep an eye on the development of the consultation procedure launched by WADA as far as the Olympic system is concerned. A Paralympic pledge to implement the Code cannot stand alone and must take account of developments in wider fora. This also applies to the highly problematic Article 4, section 1, which in my opinion could be the most critical part of the entire text.

Figure 1. Acceptance of World Anti-Doping Code (WADA, 2002).

The structural aspect of doping and the need to relativise the role of the individual athlete are therefore extremely important. In addition to this observation, which is fuelled mainly by my concern over individual athletes' rights and the rule of law in an environment where individual responsibility may be a rather fictitious affair, I would like to emphasise how much I appreciated it every time I heard someone point to the presence of doping outside the sports world. The emergence of a 'doping society' in which normality is reinforced by various substances because students want better grades or workers want to better perform is a case for concern and deserves to be treated by futurologists. Research from Italy (C. Pesce and S. Donati) indicated that 4.5% of boys and girls at age 11 take creatine while the figure for the 13-year olds is even more alarming: 12% [sic]. These data were reported at a conference in Copenhagen earlier this year and a Danish doctor was quoted saying that similar trends could be observed in Denmark². Such behaviour is not driven by the motivational strands inherent to sports, indeed some young people seem to take nutritional supplements just as part of a particular lifestyle.

This artificially reinforced normality is a serious societal problem and may be the main reason why the European Union has a policy on doping substances and practices. Were doping only a question of fair play, then concern and action at the European level would, under the principle of subsidiarity, hardly be legitimate. But it is far more: doping is dangerous and doping affects large populations - among these are many people who are particularly fragile, either because of their position within given group structures, or due to their age, or on account of both of these. This is what B. Houlihan (1998) called people 'dying to win'. It is in fact largely because of those aspects, which are not sport-specific, that the EU has an anti-doping policy.

Both the problems of the disabled and the fight against doping are being tackled at the European level, in addition to the work done at national and local level, within the statutory sphere and by civil society alike. Linking them in a framework like this congress seems a very natural thing indeed. For the commitment of the European Union to the fight against doping is motivated largely by the social and societal aspects of doping - those which are not sport-specific. Much of the Community's sport-related policies can be described as concerned with social inequalities in sport and how best to reduce these.

Thus, Parliament has shown high expectations as regards the Commission's commitment to inspire, promote, fund and lead the necessary coordination. The last invitation I quoted is the justification for grants like the one made to the project group responsible for this Congress.

The specific problems related to Paralympic sports fit well into this thinking since it is very much concerned with disability as a social - and not a physiological - category.

Relevance to enlargement

The social dimension must not be forgotten, and this is especially true in the present Member States' and the Community's dealing with candidate countries: Economics must not get the last word. The recent study by Langewiesche & Tóth (2001) analysing the political, economic and social dimensions of enlargement was in this respect timely and highly relevant. Enlargement offers huge business opportunities while at the same time important social hazards are possible. We should see enlargement as a chance to look into social problems of many kinds, of which the relationship between disabled and able-bodied citizens is a good example.

Sport provides good case-studies for such discussions and indeed the Community's sport policy has always taken into account both the economic and social aspects of sport (See Andreu, 2002). In the case of doping in disabled sports, the organisers had noted a general lack of written policies in candidate countries and concluded that this Congress could be a catalyst for change.