EHF Congress final day round-up

The second and final day of the EHF Congress in Glasgow focused on presentations and decisions on the bids for the Men’s and Women’s EHF EURO events in 2022 and 2024.



Men’s EHF EURO 2022 in Hungary and Slovakia

An excellent bid presentation from Hungary and Slovakia won the day, beating France, Spain and Belgium to organise only the second EHF EURO with 24 teams. Denmark and Switzerland withdrew their bid ahead of the first presentations. More information on the official bidding website.

Women's EHF EURO 2022 in Slovenia, FYR Macedonia and Montenegro

Three nations will host a women's championship for the first time. As the only bidding nations for the event, Slovenia, FYR Macedonia and Montenegro, will organise the event in December 2022. Find out more on the bidding website.

Men’s EHF EURO 2024 in Germany

The German Handball Federation defeated a joint bid from Denmark and Switzerland to be the first nation to host a 24-team team EHF EURO alone. The EHF EURO in 2024 will also be the first Men’s EHF European Championship to be hosted by Germany, the nation having previously hosted the women’s event in 1994. Visit the official bidding website for complete information on the bid concept.

Filip Jicha presenting on behalf of the German EHF EURO 2024 bid

Women’s EHF EURO 2024

With no bidding nations for the event, the further steps for the awarding of the organisational rights were passed to the EHF Executive Committee.

Congress in 2021 goes to Luxembourg

The Federation Luxembourgeoise De Handball will be the hosts of the next election congress. Thanks to a decision on the opening day of the EHF Congress, the next event will take place not at the end of 2020 ahead of the Women’s EHF EURO but in 2021. Dates for the event are 23/24 April.

EHF President proposes World Championship with 32 teams

In his closing words, and addressing the IHF President Dr. Hassan Moustafa, Michael Wiederer put forward the idea of an expansion of the Men’s World Championship to 32 teams in the future.

He told the Congress that with an enlargement of the European Championship to 24 teams, it is now inconceivable to see so many strong European teams not playing at the World Championship.

Also the efforts to develop the sport on other continents and the awarding of a wildcard to Japan and possibly the USA in the future have an impact on European teams.

He said that the wildcards awarded to Germany in Qatar in 2015 and to Norway in 2017 underline that European teams can contribute to the success of a World Championship.

Mr Wiederer proposed to the IHF that they should examine the expansion of the World Championship already from 2021 when the event is due to be played in Egypt.

Sanctions against Qatar from 1 January 2019

The EHF President announced that due to outstanding payments to EHF Marketing GmbH from the Organising Committee of the 2015 IHF World Championship for sponsorship and activation measures at the 2014 VELUX EHF FINAL4, there would be a freeze on cooperation on a sporting level between the European nations and Qatar from 1 January 2019 unless the situation could be resolved.

Rinck Convention signed

Two further nations signed up to the Rinck Convention, which ensures the mutual recognition of standards and certificates in the field of coaches' education in handball in Europe. The new signatories are Bosnia Herzegovina and Kosovo.

Awards to the nations

As is customary at the EHF Congress, a number of awards were made to the EHF nations for their achievements over the past two-year period. The following awards were made:

Best-ranked nation 2016: Germany
Best-ranked nation (beach handball) 2016 and 2017: Spain
Best-ranked nation 2017: France
Award for organising three or more events: Georgia, Lithuania, Portugal, Croatia, Denmark and Sweden

EHF EURO Cup agreement signed

The federations of Sweden, Austria, Norway and the reigning EHF EURO champions, Spain, signed the EHF EURO Cup agreement on the fringes of the Congress. The first tournament will take place in October 2018 at the same time as the EHF EURO 2020 opening qualification rounds.