Niels Nygaard of Denmark and Greece’s Spyros Capralos have today announced their candidacies to replace the late Janez Kocijančič as president of the European Olympic Committees.

Kocijančič, who served as president from November 2017 after four years as vice-president, died in June at the age of 78.

Following his passing, Nygaard, EOC’s vice-president, has been serving as acting president of the organisation. 

Nygaard is also president of the Danish Olympic Committee while Capralos holds the same role with the Greek Olympic Committee as well as being on the EOC board. He was also elected an International Olympic Committee member last year.

Both Nygaard and Capralos announced their candidacies at the EOC’s 49th general assembly which was hosted at the headquarters of CONI, the Italian Olympic Committee, in Rome as an online session for the first time due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

As part of two amendments to the EOC’s Articles of Association voted for by its executive committee, the presidential election will be held at the next general assembly, “should the president or any officer(s), or other elected member(s) of the executive committee cease for any reason to hold office during their term of office.”

The next president will take the EOC into the 2023 European Games in Poland, the third edition of the quadrennial multi-sport event. Capralos was chairman of the coordination commission for Baku 2015 and Minsk 2019.

The amendment means that elections for the entire EOC executive committee will be held at next year’s general assembly in Greece on 16 April, bringing it forward from the originally scheduled date of October.

A second proposal, which was tabled by the Olympic Federation of Ireland, was aimed at aligning the EOC executive committee with Olympic Agenda 2020 proposals for gender parity in sport.

At the session, it was decided that from the next EOC elections onward, a minimum of five of the elected 16 members on the organisation’s executive board must be of each gender, “while procedures for such elections shall include provisions to ensure the minimum gender number is met.”

Sportcal