European Championships | 30 Apr 2015

In searching for improvement of European Championships

At the ETTU Extraordinary Congress held yesterday in Suzhou during the QOROS World Championships ETTU Vice Presidents Heike AHLERT and Sonja GREFBERG presented the proposals for the 2017 European Championships Team Qualifications, European Championships 2

The presentations came as an outcome of the one year study made by Committee of experts: Richard SCRUTON, Heike AHLERT, Sonja GREFBERG, Mikael ANDERSON, Oivind ERIKSEN, Roman PLESE and Dirk SCHIMMELPFENNIG. President Ronald KRAMER and Deputy President Ivo Goran MUNIVRANA also attended the meetings.

“The EB encouraged the Associations to give their comments to the proposals with the different options. Within the next week ETTU will send a questionnaire to all member Associations. They will be taken into consideration by the EB when preparing the draft regulations for the next ordinary Congress in Yekaterinburg. Changes that need to enter into force in 2016 will be sent to our members for postal ballot in May,” stated AHLERT.

The qualification format giving 30 Associations, according to final positions at EC 2015, the opportunity to qualify for the EC 2017 Championships Division. Host association will be automatically seeded in the Championships Division. Remaining Associations will have the opportunity to qualify for the EC 2017 Challenge Division with 1 place available. The right to play in the Championships Division will have top 29 teams from 2015 final team rankings, plus the winner of the Standard Division. Matches will start on January 2016 and has to be completed by June 2017.

One of the options for the European Team Championships 2017 is to have the same event as we had in 2014 Lisbon with 5 days event – Men’s Teams and Women’s Teams, 16 teams in Championships Division, 16 teams in Challenge Division and all remaining teams in Standard Division. That will mean no promotion and relegation because we will have Team qualifications.

The Working Group presented the Proposal for the look of the European Championships 2016 to be held in Budapest/Hungary from 18 to 23 October (6 days). European Championships 2016 will consist of Men’s Singles, Women’s Singles, Men’s Doubles, Women’s Doubles, and Mixed Doubles. In singles, Associations will be able to enter players according to the results of EC 2015 Team event with a maximum number of 167 players

According to Proposal the Competition Format at the first European Championships U21 will have a “lighter” look. The inaugural Championships will be a 3 days event – with Men’s singles, Women’s singles with 56 male and 56 female players according to the ETTU U21 ranking list (or 55 + 1 host). It will consist of a maximum of 3 male and 3 female players per Associations.

Vice President for Finances Dorte DARFELT informed the Congress of the financial situation of ETTU and Deputy President Ivo Goran MUNIVRANA updated the Congress on ETTU’s Development Programm.

Regarding ‘Eligibility’ it was decided to await ITTF’s decision, before changes will be proposed.

In closing President Ronald KRAMER concluded that ETTU is very much on the right track for the future and thanked the delegates for their constructive contributions which were all done in a well developing team spirit in ETTU.