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The UKAD Clean Sport Week 2019 started last Monday and it is a great opportunity to celebrate clean athletes and their achievements, alongside the hard work of national governing bodies and sporting organisations in the fight to protect clean sport.

This year’s edition will focus on Image and Performance Enhancing Drugs (IPEDs) and in particular, the motivations for, and attitudes towards, their use in the gym environment.

EuropeActive presented its concept for the recognition of fitness qualifications at the recent meeting of the Expert Group on Skills and Human Resources in Lisbon, Portugal. In a presentation called “taking the long view” it was a summary of the work that EuropeActive has been doing for the past 18 years to develop a “harmonised” approach to fitness trainer certification and qualification.

The BLUEPRINT project was recently represented at the 3^rd Validation of Prior Learning (VPL) Biennale in Berlin.  The event provided an opportunity share projects and experiences in how we are making informal and non-formal learning visible, and are valuing its worth.

The programme include Key Note speeches from policy makers leading the way in VPL, workshops providing more detail about existing projects, and the chance to evolve and commit to the Berlin Declaration on the Validation of Prior Learning.

The Biennale also gave the platform for BLUEPRINT to share its outputs, learn from others, and explore potential collaborations.

One big promise from the European Union is the free movement of people and goods. Therefore, mutual understanding of competences and qualifications is crucial to make labour market mobility in the EU reality. And it has been done a lot in this regard: NQFs, EQF, ECTS and ECVET are so called transparency tools currently used by all member states to support transparency of certificates, diplomas and qualifications.

Ultimately, transparency is necessary to value and to be able to remunerate persons’ work in accordance with their skills, knowledge and competences.

One big promise from the European Union is the free movement of people and goods. Therefore, mutual understanding of competences and qualifications is crucial to make labour market mobility in the EU reality.

EuropeActive joins the celebration for the Europe Day 2019. The occasion marks the anniversary of the Schuman Declaration - 9 May 1950. The declaration proposed the pooling of French and West German coal and steel industries, leading to the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community, the first European Community, established in 1952.

To celebrate Europe Day, the EU Institutions opened their doors in Brussels on 4^th May, 9^th May in Luxembourg and 19^th in Strasbourg.  The Open Day is a unique opportunity to discover how the EU institutions affect the daily life of all EU citizins.

A WHO expert panel has reviewed evidence on the beneficial impact of physical activity on young children and has assessed the effect of inadequate sleep and inactivity.

The experts stress that the early years are especially important because enough active time and quality sleep when you are young can avoid obesity and associated diseases later in life. A vital point, given the unprecedented levels of childhood obesity and physical inactivity throughout Europe.

An important message given by the WHO is that we have to bring back play time. Sedentary time, including screen time, should be limited while maintaining adequate sleep time.

With European Elections only a month away, the time is right to look at which Member of the European Parliament (MEP) has most impacted policies and legislation during the current legislature. And that’s exactly what VoteWatch.eu has done. The list of the 100 most influential MEPs has been published together with a detailed methodology on how they created the ranking.

The Smart Wearables for Sports and Fitness Market Report 2019 emphasizes how the fitness equipment industry maintained a relatively optimistic growth in the past four years and it will further expand in the next future. The Report contains detailed forecast estimations in terms of market size, revenue outcome, sale volume, production volume, and growth rate which have been extracted after an in-depth evaluation of historical occurrences of the market.

A new study, published by researchers from the Boston University School of Medicine, shows that incremental light intensity physical activity, such as short, regular walks, is associated with higher brain volume. The researchers worked with a sample of 2354 participants of which almost half met the physical activity guidelines of 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity per week.