Why a right-wing economist praises Čaplovič

The Minister of Education has completed a reform of sports financing that, under his predecessor, failed to pass due to opposition from lobbyists.
 

The image of Minister Dušan Čaplovič is that of the unluckiest member of the government. He has been overwhelmed by scandals over overpriced rentals, a luxury Audi, the purchase of expensive cognac, and flowers whose final vase he doesn’t even know… Teachers criticise him for wasting money instead of fighting for higher salaries. It almost seems no one has a good word to say about Čaplovič. Yet there is something for which even advisers to right-wing politicians have praised him – the reform of sports financing. The new rules passed this year without much “fuss” and, for the first time, full grants were paid to applicants under the system this summer. The formula used by ministry officials to calculate money for sports federations considers three criteria: sporting achievement, popularity (at home and abroad), and the number of young athletes. Interestingly, the new financing model was prepared by the advisory team of former minister Eugen Jurzyca (SDKÚ-DS).

Due to resistance from sports officials and lobbyists, as well as early elections, Jurzyca never signed the funding decree. The new leadership of the ministry surprisingly implemented it with only minor adjustments, and the €20 million support package for national teams and sports disciplines was already distributed according to the new formula.

“This is something they deserve praise for,” says economist Ján Marušinec from MESA 10. In the previous parliamentary term, he was a member of Jurzyca’s advisory team, along with football agent Jozef Tokos, ice hockey coach Ján Filc, tennis federation secretary Igor Moško, and canoeing manager Richard Galovič. They are the authors of the reform. According to Tokos, the previous criteria for allocating the funds were insufficient and hard to measure. The system worked in such a way that whoever knew which door to knock on at the ministry would get more.

They therefore proposed that the system should reward sports more that are popular with the public, represent Slovakia abroad, and attract young people to take up sport. A key problem in Slovak sport, they argued, is the lack of growth in its membership base. This will soon become apparent in ice hockey, where the older generation is retiring and there are no athletes to replace them. At the top of the ranking of best-financed sports under the new calculations were, logically, football, ice hockey, tennis, and swimming. At the bottom were fishing, mini-golf, and dog training.

The opposition from sports officials to the proposed system was strong under Jurzyca – the reform did not suit smaller sports, and the Slovak Olympic Committee (SOV) also protested. Olympians were particularly opposed to the measurement of popularity, which they argued disadvantaged medal-winning sports. Popularity was to be measured by domestic and foreign surveys, media monitoring, and sports broadcast viewership. Olympians also objected to the fact that, for example, whitewater canoeing would lose tens of thousands of euros under the revised calculations. Because of strong lobbying, experts did not expect the new minister to continue with the reform. “We thought Čaplovič would just sweep it off the table,” added Marušinec.