Juaki <<aladelta>>
responds to my question about why the European Championship was canceled by
CIVL:

You would have to ask Águst the CIVL president about this. It has
been his decision even though he announces that it has been cancelled with the
organizer's agreement. That is not true.

I will try to write a small summary of what has happened.

We had a very low budget for Pre-Euros and for Euros, based only on the income
from entry fees, but we still think that the competition is viable, even with
the high CIVL requirements. Flip Koetzier was the steward at the Pre-Euros, as
Claudia could not come, because of Pedro's illness

CIVL requires that the test events be run in the same manner as the category 1
events. This means twelve to twenty staff members (event organizer, meet
director, safety director, scorer and assistant, three launch officials per
lane, two to three goal officials and so. Expenses and travel cost of FAI
officials. The low budget does not allow this and we had to run the pre-European
competition with only six staff members. I think that they all did an excellent
and satisfying job.

The Bureau has recommended that this requirement be changed.

I personally was flying at the Pre-Euros, in the same way that I
have done at all the test events that I have organized up to now, Pre-Euros Ager
2009, Algodonales 2000. CIVL rules do not allow key officials to fly in the
competition. For this reason there was a change in the key officials and Casti
the event organizer had the roll of meet director (he is an expert hang gliding
and paragliding pilot and knows the local area). I did the translation for him
at task briefings and was in charge of the scoring and the web site. We also
appointed a new safety director because the safety director that was on the bid
couldn't assist the meet. This person is Carlos Ganter, a big expert that has
worked with me at the Pre-euros and Euros of Ager 2010. These changes of key
officials didn't satisfy Flip and as long as I know and were one of the
principal reasons of his unfavourable Steward's report found
here.

I do recognize that there were certain deficiencies and all of them were going
to be improved looking forward to the Euros 2014.
The steward's report stated that Flip was confident that we could have a
successful Championship for 2014.

Two months ago we asked CIVL, if it was possible, to delay the championship one
week from the original scheduled dates. The original dates, week of 7th to 13th
of July at Pamplona there is the San Fermin feast (bulls run). This could cause
some logistic problems, basically lodging. There was also a small clash with the
Worlds at Annecy that would only allow one day to travel for the women assisting
at Annecy. The closing date at Annecy is on the 7th and we would start on the
8th. So we thought that this could cause harm. But we stated at every moment
that if CIVL didn't agree with this we would still keep with the original dates.

I am a very experienced meet director. I have extensive experience in running
Category 1 and Category 2 events. WAG 2001 - hang gliding Worlds at Algodonales
in 2001 with 188 pilots (last and only championship with Class 1 and Class 2
together). 17th hang gliding European championship at Ager 2010 and several
category 2 events, around two to three events each year for the last ten years.

The CIVL Bureau and most important the whole hang gliding community of pilots
knows my capacity to run a very successful European hang gliding championship.

So I can only manifest my total disagreement with CIVL's decision and I would
like Davis to use your world wide forum as a platform to let all the hang
gliding community know about the reasons of this decision. I think that CIVL is
causing a big harm to our sport and over all doesn't take in the opinion of the
pilots.

Maybe CIVL has to have a look at their umbilicus and ask themselves "why aren't
the any bidders for the coming years competitions?"

I would like to inform everybody that we will still be organizing our National
championship for 2014 at Arangoiti in the same dates as the Europeans. It will
be an Open Cat.2 event and will be open to all those pilots that still want to
come to Arangoiti - Lumbier. The dates will be 11th to 20th July 2014 or either
18th to 27th July 2014. We will use the same web site
www.arangoiti2014.com
for this competition. I will update it for next week.

From the CIVL Stewards,
http://www.paragliding-slovenia.si/forum/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=7050&p=26555#p26555:

The Stewards working on this competitions are Claudia and Flip,
very experienced Stewards. A summary of the stewards letter to CIVL:

Two basic positive facts:

- Arangoiti is a very good area with interesting flying conditions

- The organizers can set up pretty good tasks

However...

- Communication with the steward during the preparation process was
unacceptable.

- Changes in key officials were done without informing or consulting with
steward and were unsuitable.

- The practice event was not able to demonstrate the organizers’ ability or
willingness to run a Category 1 event. They did not present a well structured,
smooth running organization.

- The organizers have their own ideas on how a competition should be run and
several of those go against the CIVL standards. This will compromise the overall
safety of the event.

- Things will not be different next year. When reading the answers from the
organizers to the steward report, it is clear that they are not planning to
follow some of the steward’s recommendations.

- The organizers suggest that the Nationals a week before would be the practice
event, but this is unacceptable: the practice event is supposed to happen a year
in advance so adjustments can be made in time for the main event.

- Pilots who will invest their time and money to be there will not be offered
the standards, including safety, of an European Championship.

- The Organizer Agreement has not been respected and the organizers were aware
of doing this. In other words, the contract was broken.

- It would be sad not to have an Europeans championship, but it would be far
worse to have a Cat. 1 comp that disregards the standards by which every other
organizer abides, or where something unfortunate happens and the CIVL knows it
could have been prevented.

- The stewards strongly recommend the Bureau to review the decision of having
the Europeans in Arangoiti next year, setting a clear precedent that the CIVL is
serious about standards and safety.

While we now have some idea of why the Bureau cancelled the 2014
Europeans, we don't have enough specific information to see the causes of the
conflict.