Sport ministry to combat match fixing through benefit of EU programme project

The Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sport of Georgia has announced the country will be one of six participants benefiting from a project run under the European Union's Erasmus+ Sport programme for combatting match fixing.

The national governing body has earned a grant for IntegriSport Next, a programme of CSCF Foundation for Sport Integrity that will bring together professionals from participating nations to discuss means for, and share experience in, dealing with sports manipulation.

Joint research, awareness-raising projects and deepening of cooperation will be some of the ways through which the programme will seek to benefit participant countries, which beside Georgia include Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, Malta and Sweden.

[The participants will discuss] appropriate investigative techniques, legal instruments, sport policy, sport betting and virtual currencies in sport at national and international level to be effective in the criminal procedure regarding matchfixing"

- CSCF Foundation for Sport Integrity

The Georgian ministry said topics of the joint effort would involve betting regulations, systems for legal and sports management of match fixing cases and "foundations of coordinated national-level" efforts to combat it.

For the ministry - which is subject of a reorganisation and will become the Ministry of Culture, Sport and Youth - the programme marks the first time it has earned an Erasmus+ Sport grant of the EU programme for education, training, youth and sport.

IntegriSport Next, which is drawn up for the years 2021-2022,  follows the original IntegriSport programme from the foundation and benefits from its status as an Erasmus+ project, which brings support from the European Commission, CSCF has said in its summary.