EuropeActive is the leading not-for-profit organization representing the European health and fitness sector that serves over 52 million consumers, it generates 26.7 billion Euro in revenues, employs over 650,000 people, and consists of 51,200 facilities. EuropeActive currently represents approximately 22,000 facilities and has 21 National Associations and with a membership spread across 30 countries in Europe. EuropeActive is governed by its members through it statutes and who are represented by an elected Board of Directors and an executive President (currently Sir Graham Watson, former Member of the European Parliament and President of the ALDE group in the European Parliament). The executive and administrative team of EuropeActive comprises 8 full-time and 4 part-time people with a 50:50 gender balance.

EuropeActive provides the unique voice for the fitness, physical activity, and wellbeing sector at the EU level in Brussels, with the aim to get MORE PEOPLE, MORE ACTIVE, MORE OFTEN. To support this mission EuropeActive has printed a number of reference papers and books which cover areas of planning, methods to increase the number of fitness users, how to motivate inactive people to become active, and how to up-skill workers to provide an ever increasing range of products and services that supports the importance of people to adopt healthy lifestyles. Since its foundation, EuropeActive has worked together with EU institutions, academics, national associations, anti-doping national agencies and WADA to the promotion of free-doping environment, in recreational sport. Indeed, there is a growing concern that doping outside the elite sporting system is an expanding and problematic phenomenon, giving rise to the belief that the misuse of doping agents in recreational sport has become a societal problem and a public health concern. For a number of years EuropeActive has been represented on High Level Groups, EU Expert Groups, including the former EU Expert Group on Doping in Recreational Sport (DRS) and was also an expert on their separate ad hoc advisory group. Through the close involvement with this expert group and other EU initiatives, EuropeActive has been proactive in informing and supporting its members ina  number of key policy areas, including doping. In January 2015 EuropeActive completed, as the consortium leader, a research project called Study on Doping Prevention in Recreational Sport (NC-05-14-065-EN-N). The SoDP provided an overview of current practice and legislation as it applies to the prevention of doping in recreational sport, identifying key barriers to implementation of doping prevention programs. The seven recommendations arising from the Study were presented to the Sport Directors’ meeting in Riga in February 2015. This project is based on implementing some of these recommendations.