“Health-sport”, from the European to the local level: the circulation of European norms and categories of thought

International audienceAs European issues, sport and health stand at the crossroads between various areas of state policies and levels of governance. The way they have gradually become objects of EU action not only reflects the community authority’s propensity to intervene in areas outside its exclusive powers, but also the contemporary evolution of its modes of intervention and the relations between the European norms and national ones. The European Union is not initially destined to standardize national health or sport policies. Since they are under the jurisdiction of Member States, sport and health fall within one of the EU’s supporting competences. However, since the 2000s, the notion of the prevention of sedentary lifestyles through physical activities and sport has gradually imposed itself in many medium-sized and big European cities, thus responding to resolutions, recommendations, injunctions issued by the EU. How do health-related norms and models circulate then, especially those relying on sport and physical activity to prevent chronic diseases? The introduction of the open method of coordination, together with the increase in technical norms, calls for a review of the relations between the EU norms and the national ones. In the context of the fight against obesity and other chronic diseases - such as cardiovascular and metabolic diseases (OMS, 2011) – the European institutions recommend that people engage in a regular physical activity. Drawing from a new category of state action called “health-sport” and an integrated approach to the promotion of health through physical activity, French cities use the recommendations issued first by international organizations and then by European ones: the European Commission’s Green Paper “Promoting healthy diets and physical activity” (2005), the EU “health sport” working group’s recommendations (2008), and the recommendations of the World Health Organization’s strategy on physical activity in the European Region (2016-2025)... It is in this context that the city of Strasbourg initiated an innovative policy entitled “Health-sport by prescription” as early as 2012. This chapter aims to demonstrate how sedentary lifestyles in Europe are gradually becoming a “public issue” for the EU, which must be addressed by territorial authorities and Member States by promoting “active” lifestyles and the medical prescription of physical activity among their citizens. Using the applicable sport and health norms as examples, this chapter also proposes to analyze the relations between the European and national norms (do they compete with or exclude one another? / are they mixed-up or do they blend with one another? / are they organized horizontally or vertically? / are they coexisting or applied in a complementary manner?