The stamp of approval for the man who runs a philately business came the day after the Council had confirmed  the award of the European Athletics Under-23 Championships to Bydgoszcz and European Athletics Junior Championships to Grosseto in 2017. 

In April Hansen, whose Presidential manifesto was entitled “Leading Change”, told insidethegames:  “I don’t see Commissions so much in the future.

“We will of course be keeping key elements, like the Development and Competition Commission, and the Athletes Commission.

“But I don’t we will have any longer for instance the Reflection Commission.

"We don’t want to look backwards and sit around to talk about what happened and what went wrong. Now we have to look forwards.

“We are establishing a number of working parties, and this will be one of the areas we look at.

“These will be small working groups, with very few people in them. We will be looking at the marketing situation, and also at our communications.”

Now some of those plans are coming to fruition in the form of new names and terms of reference for two previously existing Commissions, the creation of two new Commissions, and the discontinuation of five whose functions will be absorbed elsewhere.

There will also be a greater percentage of women appointed to the commissions than in the past.

The new Commission line-up agreed today includes the Member Federation Development Commission chaired by France's Jean Garcia, vice-president of European Athletics. 

The Event and Competition Commission will be chaired by Sweden's European Athletics Council member Toralf Nilsson and the Business and Marketing Commission by Germany's Frank Hensel, another vice-president. 

The Strategic Communication Commission will be chaired by European Athletics vice-president Dobromir Karamarinov, a Bulgarian. 

The Medical and Anti-doping Commission will be chaired by Portugal's Pedro Branco and the Athletes Commission by Austrian marathon runner Gunther Weidlinger.

The discontinued commissions whose topics will be covered elsewhere are Clubs, Cross Country, Education, Mountain Running, Race Walking and Reflection.

The total number of Commission members has been reduced from 93 to 62

“My emphasis is on teamwork and commitment,” said Hansen.

“One of the main aims of the new structure is to get people with different areas of expertise and experience working closely together and contributing to our projects.

“I believe that with fewer Commissions there will be more meaningful interaction and it will lead to increases in the creativity and energy we need to get things done.

“We also want additional input from the Head Office, which will be responsible for implementing many of the recommendations that come out of the commissions, so we will be appointing staff members to be the deputy chairs for each commission.

“Part of their role will be to maintain pages on the European Athletics website so everyone can follow what the commissions are working on and how they are progressing.”

Pointing out that the number of positions to be filled by women, previously 19 per cent, has been increased to 25 per cent, he added: “European Athletics has been working to raise awareness and promote women leaders at all levels of our sport for some years through our Women’s Leadership Awards, a number of innovative seminars and other measures.”

On the subject of the two confirmed bids from Bydgoszcz and Grossetto, Hansen commented: "The Council was pleased with the impressive presentations made by both bidders for two of our most important events.

“The European Athletics under-23 and Junior Championships are crucial in the development of young athletes across the continent and we look forward to these two great events in collaboration with the Polish and Italian local Organising Committees."

The Polish delegation led by Piotr Dlugosielski, general secretary of the Polish Athletic Association and Iwona Waszkiewicz, vice-president of the City of Bydgoszcz, said it intended to use these Championships to promote athletics as one of the most popular sports throughout the country.

The Italian Athletics Federation has already successfully hosted the European Athletics Junior Championships in July 2013 in Rieti, and Grosseto was therefore seen as a natural choice to host the event.

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