Combined Congress of CEB and ESF

The Confederation of European Baseball and the European Softball Federation held combined Congress in February 2017, in Belgrade (Serbia). During the meeting members held the report-elective conference of CEB and ESF, where the delegates of member countries discussed the issue of the governing bodies. Ukraine was represented at the meeting by the President of the Ukrainian Baseball and Softball Federation, Andriy Nikolaenko, the vice-president of UBSC, Vasyl Kysil, the member of Executive Committee of UBSC and the Head Coach of the Ukrainian national baseball team, Oleg Boyko.

The guest of honor, the President of the World Baseball Softball Confederation (WBSC), Riccardo Fraccari has made a speech during the Congress. He has arrived to Belgrade to express support to the members of CEB and EFS. Also he has shared his plans towards baseball and softball in the program of the Olympic Games, Tokyo 2020. WBSC plans to provide each National Federation with direct financial grands. It is planned to create partnership relations with the World Baseball Softball Confederation (WBSC) and the National Federations of European countries. During the Congress, the Executive Director, Michael Schmidt has conducted the preliminary negotiations with the Presidents of National Federations and with representatives of UBSC.

Gabriel Vaage from Czech Republic has become the President of ESF. His colleagues noted that he is very respected and hardworking person.
At CEB report-elective conference the delegates elect directly the President and the Executive Committee. They need to elect three vice-presidents, secretary, treasurer and three members of Executive Committee. Each National Federation has the right to give the applicants for elective office. And last year in December, UBSC for the first time used its right to put forward Oleg Boyko, as the candidate for CEB Executive Committee.
As Oleg Boyko told, the elections were quite intense and it was needed to hold five rounds of voting to determine the composition of the Executive Committee.

Before, the delegates elected a Frenchmen, Didier Seminet to be the CEB President. They also elected the first, second and third vice-presidents, the secretary and the treasurer of the Executive Committee. 12 candidates claimed for the remaining three positions in the Executive Committee. Two of them are Italian, Marco Manucci and the representative from Netherlands, Roderik Bock. They have received 50% of votes and both reached the first round.
This year, Oleg Boyko and the representative of Romania have divided next to the last and last positions in this tour. They had to take part in single vote elimination. In the third round of the election to the Executive Committee two candidates have removed their candidatures in favor of the Englishman, John Boyd. He was the member of the previous Executive Committee and worked in the Commission of the Development. The Englishman and the Ukrainian have received the same number of votes in the fourth round. And only in the fifth round the delegates have staffed the Executive Committee of CEB. Oleg Boyko has won the elections with the score 19:13. Thus, the head couch of Ukrainian national team Oleg Boyko became the member of the CEB Executive Committee.