FIBA Europe Board decides to cancel all 16 of this summer’s FIBA European Championships

The FIBA Europe Board convened on Tuesday to discuss and take decisions about upcoming events.

The meeting, which took place via video conference, was chaired by FIBA Europe President Turgay Demirel, with FIBA President Hamane Niang, FIBA Secretary General Andreas Zagklis and FIBA Executive Director Europe Kamil Novak also in attendance.

POST-COVID-19 ROADMAP

In opening proceedings, Mr. Demirel announced the creation of a FIBA Europe Post-COVID-19 Roadmap. The project will carefully assess the current situation in Europe and prepare guidelines of how to bring European basketball back on track. It will be presented in the next Board in May.

Mr. Demirel said: “I have the utmost trust that we can work together and help each other to solve the issues that this crisis has brought along.”

YOUTH CHAMPIONSHIPS

Taking into consideration the critical and extraordinary situation across Europe resulting from the pandemic and in order to protect the health and safety of young players, coaches, officials and fans, the Board decided, because of the high volume of events, to cancel all 16 of this summer’s FIBA European Championships as well as the Women’s Summit in Postojna, Slovenia.

The cancellation of the events would mean that:

All 2020 hosts should be granted first access to host the same tournament in 2021 if they wish to do so. Otherwise a candidature procedure will be opened as per the usual timeline in Autumn 2020;
No promotion/relegation in any category;
Teams for the FIBA U19 Basketball World Cup 2021 will qualify using the current FIBA World Ranking Youth Men presented by Nike;
Teams for the FIBA U19 Women’s Basketball World Cup 2021 will qualify using the current FIBA World Ranking Youth Women presented by Nike;
The registrations for all Youth European Championships will be done normally for 2021 as National Federations will register teams based on strength of the respective generations and also the financial situation. Subsequently there will be a new Draw for 2021.

FINANCIAL

In order to mitigate at least the financial effect brought on by the cancellation of the summer’s events the Board agreed that FIBA Europe will pay in full the youth events’ Youth Participation Fee to all National Federations.

Mr. Novak said of the decision: “We thought it is important to support our National Federations in this time of crisis and give them at least part of the means to successfully restart their youth activities once the crisis is over.”

FIBA Europe will also keep an open line with all organizers of this summer’s events regarding fees and an outlook to 2021.

The Board agreed that a slightly different approach is required with regard to the Youth Development Fund program. The funding of projects will continue even if their delivery is delayed, due to the current crisis.

FIBA Europe will keep track of all developments and their impact on the program will be evaluated by the Board as part of the Post-COVID-19 Roadmap.

GENERAL ASSEMBLY

The FIBA Europe General Assembly, originally scheduled for next month, in Vilnius, Lithuania, has been postponed to Autumn 2020. The final date will be confirmed during the next Board meeting.