The vote was taken during the European Athletics Congress here in the Lithuanian capital.

General alignment with the IAAF was one of the eight proposals and its approval will see the European Athletics Constitution share the same set of fundamental principles as the world governing body on topics such as gender equality, eligibility criteria, athletes’ voice and vote at the Council.

The other seven proposals unanimously approved related to topics such as "roles, duties and power" and "European Athletics Association (EAA) Court, EAA Code of Ethics and Ethics Board".

"Congress proceedings, languages and open vote" also featured on the list along with "Athletes’ Committee", "term length", "special majorities" and "editorial and re-wording".

IAAF President Sebastian Coe was among those in attendance at the Congress.

In December of last year, the Briton saw members of the IAAF Special Congress in Monaco vote in his far-reaching reforms by 182 votes to 10 after urging delegates at the start of the meeting to protect the future of their sport.

Referring to a year in which athletics was mired in allegations of corruption that have seen former President Lamine Diack become the subject of a French police investigation, Coe told the 197 delegates at the start of the meeting: "We cannot let this happen again."

The 10 votes against the reform package came from Benin, Bahrain, Chad, Gambia, Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia, Laos, Malaysia, Sri Lanka and Thailand.

There were no votes recorded from Jamaica, Oman, Senegal, Ukraine and Uzbekistan.

Speaking before today’s vote, European Athletics President Svein Arne Hansen told delegates: "We trust that as you have supported these changes at the IAAF level, you all agree these important steps shall be also made at the European level."

Another proposal approved today was that for the implementation of good governance requirements for European Athletics Member Federations.

A total of 46 of the 50 Member Federations voted in favour with four against.

Two proposals were removed, however, with one of them surrounding gender equality on the European Athletics Council.

"The Council is strongly engaged to build up the gender equality within the EA (European Athletics) bodies from 2019 and for the following elections to progressively reach a balance," the Congress agenda notes read.

"However, the Council believes the Member Federations also need to prepare and create the conditions to reach this balance in a qualitative way."

The discussion on this will be brought to the 2019 Congress, today awarded to Czech Republic’s capital Prague following a vote that also included candidacies from Georgia’s capital Tbilisi and Madeira’s capital Funchal.

The other proposal removed was that regarding "respect and promotion of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Convention on the Rights of the Child and Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities".

"A similar proposal was presented to the IAAF Congress and SWE (Sweden) has there withdrew it, agreeing it required further study," the agenda notes read.

"It makes sense that this proposal is first studied by the IAAF and then discuss the alignment with the EAA Constitution."