In Hungary, new acts on education and sport have been implemented and according to these acts, the National Olympic Committee (NOC) became the leading institute of Hungarian sport and solely responsible for distributing government funds. As a consequence, all sport-related national organizations had to clarify their relation to this body and call its respective general assembly to modify their statues accordingly.

 

The Hungarian University Sports Federation (HUSF) also held its general assembly in February and besides modifying its statues, a new leadership was also elected by the delegates. The modified statues of HUSF received an unanimous vote from the delegates who also elected a new leadership for the next four-year term. The President of HUSF is prof. dr. Adam Kiss, and the new Vice Presidents are Tamas Skultety and dr. Tamas Freyer. Members of the Executive Board are dr. Antal Kovacs (Olympic Champion in judo), dr. Pongrac Acs, dr. Laszlo Kiss, Gabor Maszlaver and Gabor Simon (the latter two are representatives of The National Union of Students in Hungary).

 

The general assembly accepted a resolution submitted by the Chairman of the meeting in which the delegates expressed their thanks to the retired Board and to the former Secretary General for their fair and correct activity. The new General Secretary of HUFS, dr. Mozes Szekely was supported unanimously by the new leadership.

 

HUSF became a member of the National Olympic Committee. Prof. dr. Miklos Toth, Dean of the Semmelweis University was elected Chairman of the Commission for Student and University Sports within the NOC. Mr Toth was also elected Vice President of NOC by its general assembly.

 

Mr Attila Czene, State-Secretary for Sport (former Olympic Champion swimmer) and Mr Erik Banki, Chairman of the Parliament’s Commission for Sport and Tourism also attended the meeting. They both addressed the participants, introducing the Government’s new approach and plans to strengthen and widen the base of university sport. Mr Czene said that in the new structure HUSF would bear the sole responsibility to represent the interests of university and high-school sports. “The organization has to control the cooperation between the smaller institutes being responsible for mass sport events of universities and high-schools. It has to prepare a new scholarship and career-building program for athletes and naturally the Federation will be responsible for handling the participation of our athletes in international events.”

 

Mr Erik Banki emphasized that as far as sport is concerned the Government passed all decision-making responsibilities to its self-governed partners. The Chairman added that universities have to offer better facilities for their students whose choice could be effected by the sport facilities and opportunities in the respective institutes. “The Government will also make its contribution as we decided to end the Tuske Hall-saga after twenty years by finishing the hall’s construction and within a short period of time this multifunctional venue will be available exclusively for the university students,” Mr Banki said. The mentioned object, located in the neighbourhood of two biggest Budapest based universities, was planned to be ready by 1994 but was never completed. The Chairman also said that HUSF would have to come up with a development program for the span of the next ten years and if its targets meet the demands the Government would secure multiplied amount of funds to lift university sports to a much higher standard.