The European Handball Federation will step into a new era when it holds its elections for the period from 2016 to 2020 at the 2016 EHF Congress which will take place in St. Wolfgang, Austria on 17 November.
Due to the fact that the EHF's statutes state an age limit of 68 years for an elected function as well as a maximum of three terms of four years each in one function, there will be numerous changes beckoning when the elections are held.
In the EHF Exectuive Committee (EXEC) alone, eight of 11 positions will see new people taking over.
Across all committees and commissions there are 113 candidates that have been nominated for more than 50 positions. Among the 93 individual persons seeking a function (some have been nominated for more than one), 24 are women.
For the position of the EHF President, EHF Secretary General Michael Wiederer is the only candidate to succeed Jean Brihault who has been in office since 2012.
For the position of the EHF Vice President, currently held by Arne Elovsson, there are two candidates. Predrag Boskovic from Montenegro, who is already a member of the Executive Committee as well as President of the Montenegro Handball Federation, has been nominated as well as Anrijs Brencans, currently the Secretary General of the Latvian Handball Federation.
For the position of the treasurer, currently held by Ralf Dejaco, there is only one candidate. Dane Henrik La Cour, currently a member of the EHF's Technical Refereeing Committee.
The three chairmen of the Competitions (CC), the Methods (MC) and the Beach Handball Commission (BC) are also a part of the EHF EXEC. There are two candidates to succeed Leopold Kalin as chairman of the CC: Bozidar Djurkovic from Serbia, currently an EHF Comptroller, as well as Ernö Kelecsenyi who has been nominated by the Slovakian Handball Federation.
Jerzy Eliasz, who is already the chairman of the MC, is the only candidate for this position. In the BC, Sinisa Ostoic challenges the current chairman Ole R. Jørstad.
For the three member positions within the EXEC, there are overall 13 candidates.
Besides the aforementioned EXEC and the three commissions, the upcoming elections stretch across the EHF Comptrollers, the EHF Court of Handball, the EHF Court of Appeal, the EHF Court of Arbitration Council, the EHF Nations Board and the Women's Handball Board.
The EHF releases this list of candidates on the basis of transparency immediately after the deadline for nominations passed on midnight of 17 August. The final and confirmed list will be released following the next meeting of the EHF EXEC on 19 September.
The list of all candidates is available for download.