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Whoever enters the European
Handball Federation’s
headquarters
at Hoffingergasse 18 in
Vienna quickly gains a
vivid impression of the international orientation
and professionalism of the umbrella
organisation’s administration – phone conversations
going on everywhere, offices
bustling with activity. Today, the EHF and
its subsidiary EHF Marketing employ a staff
of 57 from 17 nations in the south-west of
Austria‘s capital. Conversations are therefore
held not only in typically Viennese
dialect, but also in the Hungarian, Danish,
French, Serbian and Polish languages and,
most importantly, in English.
Today, 25 years after the EHF’s foundation,
its administration is organised in a
large number of different departments.
Every member of the staff has clearly defined
duties in their respective areas of
work. Some of them work for Competitions,
the department headed by Markus
Glaser. Others, directed by David Szlezak,
take care of marketing and organisation of
the VELUX EHF Champions League. Others
again, inspired by Helmut Höritsch, drive
activities in the Education & Development
Department. The department managed
by Christoph Gamper dedicates all its
time and effort to IT equipment and facility
support. And then there are the specialists,
headed by JJ Rowland, who focus
exclusively on the EHF’s website and social
media maintenance, as the fans’ thirst for
news and moving images from European
handball is known to be insatiable. And,
of course, in an active sporting federation
comprising 50 nations and many partners,
the Finance and Legal Management Departments
also play an essential role.
The very top of the organisation is formed
by Strategic Business under the leadership
of Secretary General Michael Wiederer.
The General Secretariat is not only responsible
for organising EHF Congresses and
Executive meetings, but also serves as the
central body controlling communication
and the umbrella organisation’s promotional
activities. This department is nothing
less than the hub of European handball.
The many queries and ideas from the
member federations that converge at this
point are centrally collected and organised
to form the basis on which this “think tank”
discusses and develops concepts for the future
of European handball.
This, of course, is always done in close
collaboration with the higher-level body of
elected representatives serving in commissions
whose first origins can be traced back
to the year 1991, but which have become
increasingly numerous and specialised in
the course of the 25 years of EHF history.
In a way, they mirror the stakeholders’ diverse
interests in the umbrella organisation.
After the EHF Congress, which meets
every two years, the next most important
body is the Executive Committee, which
meets to discuss and decide key sports-political
issues between the Congresses. The
Executive Committee also considers motions
submitted by the Professional Handball
Board (PHB), the Women’s Handball
Board (WHB) and the Nations Board (NB)
in pursuit of the interests of national federations
and clubs.
The Congress elects the chair persons
of the Competitions Commission (CC),
the Methods Commission (MC), the Beach
Handball Commission (BC), the Comptrollers
and the legal bodies: the Court of
Handball, the Court of Appeal and the EHF
Court of Arbitration Council. The work of
the Competitions Commission, the Methods
Commission and the Beach Handball
Commission (BC) provides direct input to
the meetings of the Executive Committee,
as their respective chair persons are ex officio
members of the Executive Committee.
The structure and development of these
bodies and institutions, whose members
serve on an honorary basis, also reflect the
25 years of EHF history.
This history started on 15 November
1991 at a deeply symbolic place: the Dom
Hotel at Berlin’s Gendarmenmarkt in the
eastern part of the city whose Wall came
down in November 1989, an event that
significantly accelerated the disintegration
of the two large political blocs. The EHF’s
foundation had been prepared in detail in
a number of informal meetings held after
the 1990 IHF Congress in Madeira. Further
important meetings of the acting commissions
convened in Manchester (GBR) and
Frankfurt (GER) in the spring and summer
of 1991.
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