ehf_25yers_book_webversion

The vision of a united handball
Europe was still a long way
off – compared with other
sports, in any case. In football,
the interests of European national
associations have been represented
by the Union of European Football Associations
(UEFA) since 1955. The first continental
tournament took place in 1960.
Track and field athletes had their first European
Championships as early as 1934,
while the European Athletic Association
(EAA) has been operating as an institution
since 1969/70. The European Handball
Federation (EHF) was hence a latecomer
when it was created in Berlin on 17
November 1991.
This late date appears all the more curious
as the idea of a European federation
had already been on the agenda of an
European handball for more than three
decades. It had been the Yugoslav Handball
Federation that had proposed to establish
a European Handball Federation
at the IHF Congress of Liège on 23-24
September 1960. The then IHF Secretary
General Albert Wagner defused this
“bomb”, as the sports magazines called it,
by putting forth the weighty argument that
this would create a “state within a state” of
the International Federation. After all, the
World Championships were nothing but
European title contests anyway, Wagner
reasoned. The background: in 1960, of
the IHF’s 24 members only Japan, Cuba,
Brazil and Argentina were non-European
nations.
Over the years, however, the balance of
powers shifted enormously in the world
federation. By 1972, Europe, with its 24
member federations, only had a very slim
majority left among the 47 IHF members.
In the 1980s, Africa and Asia gained even
more influence. When the IHF Congress
1992 convened in Barcelona, Europe, with
42 out of 129 members, only had a share
of about 30 percent of all votes in the International
Handball Federation. Meanwhile,
the other continents had already set
up their own organisations to look after
their respective interests – Africa in 1973,
Asia in 1976, and Panamerica in 1977.
Calls for a European federation and a
continental tournament hence became
increasingly vociferous. But the numerous
attempts undertaken after the 1974 Congress
in Jesolo, Italy, to bundle European
interests in a European federation all came
to nothing, even though the establishment
of a European continental federation was
in fact the logical answer to the globalisation
of handball, as the Dane Erik Larsen
noted in 1974. He predicted it would be
achieved before the end of the 1970s: “My
tip: the summer of 1979.”
But he erred. In 1976, at the initiative of
the German federation Deutscher Handballbund
(DHB), an informal body was created,
consisting of DHB President Thiele,
Quarez (France), Dimmer (Luxembourg)
and Paulsen (Denmark), to explore potential
options with the federations from the
Eastern bloc. In 1979, even a “Congress”
of West European nations met in Luxembourg.
And in 1981, the same Congress
resolved in Copenhagen to create an EHF
in London in 1982. But a lot of time had
yet to pass.
“Europe needs its own federation” – was
the conclusion of the 1980 Congress held
in Moscow, as reported by the Handballwoche
magazine. How complex the balance
of powers was, was highlighted by
the debate on the politically sensitive issue
of the admission of Palestine to the IHF,
which was finally carried by a coalition of
East European federations, Asia and Africa.
The Asian representatives moreover
almost succeeded in adding Israel to the
Asian continent (which would actually
have meant the end of Israeli handball).
The rest of the world was certainly no
longer willing to recognise the traditional,
leading role of the Europeans based on
their stronger performance. “Against the
backdrop of increasing popularity of handball
in the countries of Asia, Africa and
America, which in Moscow resulted in the
election of IHF Vice Presidents from these
continents to the Council and the Executive,
Europeans will have no choice but to
launch their own federation to better safeguard
their own interests,” was the conclusion
of Handballwoche.
The resolve to found such an organisation
already existed: “In separate deliberations
of the Western nations on the
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