ENGSO - a brief history of a European sports organisation

• Read more about the ENGSO history
• History of the ENGSO General Assembly  and ENGSO Forum

The non-governmental sports organizations of western European countries have met for informal discussions since the early 60’ies. It was originally an initiative taken by the Netherlands Sports Confederation with strong support of the German Sports Confederation, and one can say that the start of the informal NGO Club was a meeting in Frankfurt in May 1966. At a meeting in December 1967 it was decided that no formal organization should be created.

One remark says that the official NGO Club birthday was on April 2-3, 1968 at Scheveningen, the Netherlands. Almost ten years later it was decided that the Netherlands Sports Confederation would function as the secretariat of the NGO Club and a chairman was elected. From that meeting we can follow the development in regular minutes.

In 1990 the name of the organization was changed to ENGSO- European Non-Governmental Sport Organization - and it became a formal organization with a proper constitution in 1995. Today ENGSO is a true Pan-European organization constituted by the national umbrella organizations for sports in Europe. Members of ENGSO represent the national sport in its broadest sense - from children and youth sport over to ‘sport for all ’- activities and up to elite sports.