By Denise Offerman
On Monday, 9 March, EWF Vice President Stian Grimseth and EWF Technical Committee member Denise Offermann visited the EOC EU Office in Brussels.
The EOC EU Office welcomed us with great interest and was eager to learn more about weightlifting in Europe, its history, its development, and the needs of the various regions across Europe.
It then introduced its network of direct collaboration with the EU institutions and presented its successful sport projects funded by the European Union.
The EOC EU Office has developed a number of tools within its Erasmus+ Sport projects, with the objective of helping sport organisations improve awareness, inclusion, and governance.
It also provides simplified access to EU funding for grassroots and smaller organisations, while bringing together European partners from different sports that share the same goals.
In addition, it offers fairer application mechanisms and clearer evaluation criteria.
As a result, sport project applications submitted through the EOC EU Office, which will be working on and handling any EWF application, have a greater chance of succeeding.
Furthermore, the office will provide specific future training to the EWF on how to apply for EU Erasmus+ funding correctly.
In this way, the EWF will be able to have its own people applying directly to the EU in collaboration with, and through, the EOC EU Office.
Another very important point we learned is that the EU provides annual funding to each European nation for grassroots and smaller national organisations. We will receive the contacts for all EU nations, which we would like to share with the National Weightlifting Federations, where direct applications at national level are possible.
An important factor is that, while actual competitions cannot be funded by the EU, every aspect surrounding a competition or championship can be supported.
This includes volunteers, school visits to competitions, training camps, and various seminar topics such as Women in Sport, safeguarding athletes, strength sports as new training modules, and many more.
We look forward to working on the first EWF–EOC/EU project application by summer 2026.
