Monica Maria Iacob-Ridzi (PPE-DE), in writing. – (RO) When speaking about the reviewed Lisbon Strategy, we cannot ignore a sector that employs 15 million people and produces around 4% of the European Union GDP. Indeed, sport can be an important component for our 2 big objectives: economic growth and employment

This is why I would like to emphasize some budgetary aspects of the European Union’s support for the sport sector. For the moment, we have no clear reference in the treaties in force that would allow our active involvement through programmes and funds. Nevertheless, until the Lisbon Treaty becomes effective, we can still initiate preparatory actions in the Committee on Budget, which, although limited to insignificant amounts, could start very useful projects for European sport from 2009.

I regret that, during this week’s presentation of the new Preliminary Draft Budget, we did not discuss more on the budgetary line that can be established at Chapter 3 – Citizenship of the EU Budget. I hope that, by the first Budget reading in the autumn, we will submit constructive proposals for this field.