ALGERIA CROATIA FRANCE ITALY LIBYA MALTA MOROCCO PORTUGAL ROMANIA RUSSIA SERBIA SLOVENIA SPAIN TUNISIA TURKEY UKRAINE
The Mediterranean Horseracing Union assembles horseracing authorities, racecourses and horseracing organizations of 15 countries in the Euro-Mediterranean area.
Organisation
The Mediterranean Horseracing Union is the first international horseracing organisation interdisciplinary between gallop and trot. It offers equal dignity, the same power and identical responsibilities to all its members. This is a completely new concept in the horseracing field, based on the equality among the horseracing organisations, the countries and the people involved. The Mediterranean Horseracing Union is an international horseracing association constituted in Naples on December 13th 2008 representing 16 countries: Algeria, Croatia, France, Italy, Libya, Malta, Morocco, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovenia, Spain, Tunisia, Turkey and Ukraine. Its Head Office is in Syracuse at Mediterraneo Racecourse. The association, whose members are horse racing clubs and horseracing feterations of countries bordering with the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, organises international gallop and trot horseracing events in the Member countries, promotes horseracing within the Mediterranean area improving its tradition and prestige around the world; strengthens the relationships between the Member countries and develops further co-operation in the horseracing sphere in order to improve racecourses, betting systems, professional know-how and workers’ security.
Purposes
The Mediterranean Horseracing Union goal is to attract more countries bordering with the Mediterranean and the Black Sea where professional horseracing exists, in addition to its founder members. An absolutely new project, realised after three years of effective and strong co-operation among the horseracing authorities who are its founder members, and based on the absolute equality of power among the various countries within the Association. Within the Union the more established horseracing countries contribute with their experience, while the emerging nations put their innovative energy at the others disposal.
Participation
The Mediterranean Horseracing Union is the first international horseracing organisation without distinctions within its Members, who participate all with the same rights and the same duties to its activities. This is a completely new concept in the horseracing field, where similar associations usually grant more power to the countries where the business is more developed, both as decisions makers and as financial backers of the activities, and less to the emerging countries. That is to say that the international policy of the industry is practically determined by those who are already dominating it, leaving little room for innovation. The Mediterranean Horseracing Union statute instead is based on the equality among the horseracing organisations, the countries and the people involved in them: exactly that feeling of equality gives rise to the constructive dialogue which is the basis of any democratic process.
Route
The route for the creation of the association was in fact characterised by a tolerant, egalitarian and open-minded dialogue among all parties, an exchange with a great transformation potential based on mutual respect. Respect of the countries where horseracing is less developed towards those with a long established horseracing tradition, allowing them to learn more and to be guided by the more experienced countries that have a better know-how which the developed countires have to place at their disposal. Respect of the leading countries towards the emerging ones, offering them the opportunity of an open minded approach to new ideas. The horseracing delegations of Algeria, Croatia, Italy, Malta, Morocco, Portugal, Russia, Serbia, Slovenia, Tunisia, Turkey and Ukraine, in order to arrive to the constitution of our association, followed what could be called a path towards peace. Along this route they considered positive all that brings them closer to each other and negative all that divided and countered them, by identifying the different development standards within the Union, being economy or political systems, the source of a great common power to be used to increase eachs’ national horseracing industry.
Members
The national horseracing federations, the associations and other horseracing organisations of the countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea and/or the Black Sea, as well as the racing clubs organisers of any leg of the Mediterranean Championship can become members of the Union. The Mediterranean Horseracing Union is the first supranational organisation joining together the two sectors of gallop and trot. Therefore, since there are countries where the two disciplines are represented by different federations, some countries adhere to the Union with more bodies.
The constitution of this Association followed a route similar to the one that brought to the sealing of the Declaration of Barcelona for the creation of the Mediterranean free-trade area in 2010. Also in that case the participating countries arrived to the conclusion of recognising the cultural and commercial relationship heritage among the people as the common denominator to identify the countries to involve in the project. The Euro-mediterranean partnership was therefore enlarged to include other countries not directly bordering with the Mediterranean sea, like Portugal and Serbia, as well as to the Black Sea area