At a meeting held in the Parliament Building, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and Aleksandar Boricic, President of the European Volleyball Confederation (CEV) and Executive Vice-President of the International Volleyball Federation, spoke about the results achieved by Hungary in volleyball, the system created for subsidising the sport in Hungary and the European Championships to be held next year, Bertalan Havasi, the Prime Minister’s press chief informed Hungarian news agency MTI.
At the Tuesday morning meeting, which was also attended by President of the Hungarian Volleyball Federation Ferenc Kovács, the parties concluded that Hungarian volleyball had made great progress in recent years. They particularly highlighted the performance of the women’s team, the results achieved at the last two European Championships, and the achievement of winning group three of the World Grand Prix series.
The fact that volleyball has been included in the system created for subsidising team spectator sports via corporation tax benefit revenues is a great opportunity, but also involves a great many tasks, the parties agreed at the meeting.
The parties are looking forward to the European Championships to be held in 2019, one of the hosts of which will be Hungary. Budapest has already proved its worth as one of the world’s sports capitals with the World Aquatics Championships, and so there is no obstacle to hosting other international sports events at the highest levels, they concluded.
The Hungarian men’s team may qualify for participation in the European Championship between August 2018 and January 2019, while the women’s team will take part in the event as co-host. The Men’s European Volleyball Championship will be held in France, Slovenia, Belgium and the Netherlands, while in addition to Hungary the Women’s European Championship will be hosted by Poland, Slovakia and Turkey.