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MATCH-FIXING IN THE POLICY AGENDA

As early as 2008, the 11th Council of Europe Conference of Sport Ministers responsible for Sport concluded with
a Resolution on Ethics in Sports (Council of Europe/EPAS 2008). It mentioned among the new challenges to
ethics in sport, the issue of match-fixing, corruption, and illegal betting, and invited the Council of Europe,
through its Enlarged Partial Agreement on Sport (EPAS) to “draw up a new draft recommendation to Member
States to help achieve integrity controls and a ‘fair return’ to sport for grassroots funding as regards betting”.
This was followed by a Resolution on Promotion of the integrity of sport against the manipulation of results
(fixed matches) adopted during the 18th Council of Europe Informal Conference of Ministers responsible for Sport
(Baku, 22 September 2010). The Baku Resolution inspired the Recommendation on the promotion of the integrity
of sport against manipulation of results, notably match-fixing, which was finally adopted one year later, on 28
September 2011. The Recommendation acknowledges that match-fixing is a significant threat to the integrity of
sport and invites Member States of the Council of Europe to adopt policies and measures aiming to prevent and
combat the manipulation of results in all sports. It contains a detailed list of guidelines concerning issues such as
definitions of the manipulation of sports results and the responsibilities of public authorities, sport organisations
and betting authorities.

In the section concerning “legislative and other measures” the Recommendations calls on governments “to ensure
that their legal and administrative systems are provided with appropriate and effective legal means for
combating manipulation of sports results”. It invites them to “review their existing legislation to ensure that:
“manipulation of sports results – especially in cases of manipulation of competitions open to bets –including acts
or omissions to conceal or disguise such conduct, falls within the remit of the national law and can be sanctioned
in accordance with the seriousness of the conduct” and that “legal persons can be held liable for (this) conduct”. It
also stipulates that “Member states and sports organisations should work together to establish close cooperation involving exchange of information between law enforcement or prosecuting authorities and sports
organisations”. Significantly, the recommendation invited EPAS to conduct a feasibility study on an international
Convention on match-fixing. Although the study has not been published yet it is very likely that negotiations
concerning an international legal instrument on match-fixing will start in the near future.