In a 50-minute on-stage interview with journalist, manager and athletics expert Alfons Juck at the CEO Conference in Minsk in Belarus, Hansen and Juck reviewed the accomplishments of his first term as President to date.

Responding to a question from the audience, Hansen said, "If the Member Federations want me, I will be happy to do a second term as President of European Athletics".

By end of June 2018, Hansen will have visited all but one of the Member Federation countries since he became President in April 2015.

Hansen said, "The first three years have gone by so fast.

"But during my time as President, I have been most proud of the organisational changes, the work of the head office staff and the commitment of the political level to change and innovation.

"What I want to see now is a cultural shift in the sport so that everyone, from the political level down to the local club level, embraces change and innovation."

When he took up his Presidency in 2015, at the age of 68, Hansen was proceeding with the intention of serving just one four-year term and determined to make his mark in that time.

Four years earlier he had stood for the same position, losing by 28 votes to 22 to the Swiss Hansjörg Wirz.

The European Athletics Elective Congress are due to take place in April 2019.

The Conference also heard presentations from Stefan Kürten, director of European Broadcasting Union (EBU) Sport , Nigel Garfitt, the newly appointed acting chief executive of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), Olympic and sponsor strategist Michael Payne and Bernard Lapasset, former chair of World Rugby and co-President of the Paris 2024 Games bid.

Payne delivered a keynote speech entitled "The 21st Century Reality for the Business of Sport".

He said the sporting landscape is the most uncertain it has been in the 40 years he has been working in the field of sports marketing but that uncertainty presents an opportunity for sports such as athletics.

He also laid out a number of predictions on the future of sport and how athletics could take advantage of these predictions.

Kürten outlined in his presentation all the changes in the media market in recent years, and the new technologies that EBU and its Members are developing – ones that could benefit the promotion of athletics in the future.

Lapasset related the story of the organisation’s progress in recent years with rugby sevens and other new formats and the sport’s re-entry into the Olympic Games.

He claimed that rugby sevens has been the main driver of fan growth and popularity for the sport.

Lapasset also said that sports organisations should be adventurous and not afraid to fail.

Garfitt described the four pillars of the IAAF strategy in the coming years: elite, mass, commercial and organisation.

He then went to focus on the near-time priorities for the IAAF for the rest of 2018, focusing on the Athletics Integrity Unit and the organisation’s new three-phase bidding process.