Open letter to all Olympic Committees of European Union

Sent on February,16^th 2002 to all European Olympic Committees:

To whom it may concern.

Dear Sir,

the adoption of a common currency in the European Union has decidedly been a major step towards the political federation of European countries. However, if we really want to achieve that historical result, we should lever on a common sense of affiliation among all European citizens. In my personal opinion sports can give a strong contribution to such a cultural change.

My proposal is to take advantage of next summer Olympic Games to create a European Union Team which may compete on the same level with United States of America, China, and Russia. Of course, it is too early to form a real EU team which could be totally independent from the single country teams. However we have an opportunity that we can not really miss.

The idea is to form a special technical committee made up of one representative for each country Olympic Committee. Its responsibility will be to select one or more athletes from national teams for each sport specialty to be part of EU team. No planned balancing among countries should apply. The only rule should be: get the best from the most. For example, the 4×100 relay race team might be composed by athletes belonging to three nations.

Those athletes will continue to represent their own countries in the Olympic Games, but they will also participate as members of the EU Team. All the medals that they win will be counted for a virtual score of EU Team to be compared with the ones of the other major traditional actors of Olympic Games. In future such approach might be emulated by other world countries, such as the African or Central America ones, creating a chance for new cultural and hopefully political aggregations in the world.

This proposal does not involve additional costs, nor political contrasts among countries. Vice versa it may feel all of us, in European Union, part of a common big family.