Between 2015 and 2024, the proportion of implementation indicators achieved by EU member states rose from 65% to 82%, according to the WHO Europe Physical Activity Monitoring Framework. In 2022, 19% of 15-24 year-olds reported never exercising or playing sports.
This gap between policy performance and young people’s behavior represents a recurring structural challenge in European public sport. States have made progress in building infrastructure, securing funding and improving coordination, with a reported increase in regular or fairly regular physical activity among 15-24 year-olds between 2017 and 2022, according to the Eurobarometer.
The Essentials
- Sports policy indicators have advanced from 65% to 82% between 2015 and 2024 in EU member states, according to WHO Europe.
- In 2022, 19% of 15-24 year-olds reported never exercising or playing sports, though change since 2015 cannot be established uniformly.
- Supply of infrastructure and programs does not automatically create demand: according to the Commission, the main barriers cited by young people are lack of time and motivation, with economic and social barriers playing a secondary role.
- The Netherlands has explicitly planned measures for inactive people; Finnish and Czech policies examined have broader objectives of increasing physical activity.
- The challenge for the coming years is whether Europe can advance participation where it has stalled for a decade, among young people least integrated into sports practices.
A Sports Policy Indicator
When WHO Europe says that 82% of indicators are achieved, it does not say that 82% of young people are more active. It says that governments have put in place the expected structures: national strategies, allocated budgets, physical activity guidelines in schools, data monitoring systems. This is a measure of means, not results.
This distinction is rarely spelled out in official communications. It creates an illusion of success: reports from the European Commission and WHO point to substantial progress, and they are right from an institutional perspective. Member states have genuinely improved their policy frameworks. But the tool used to measure this progress does not capture what is actually happening in young people’s lives.
The 2022 Eurobarometer Sport and Physical Activity report clarifies what lies behind these indicators. Inequalities in sports participation vary sharply depending on income level, educational level and gender. Building a multipurpose hall in a poor neighborhood is not enough to reverse this trend if no one in the young person’s immediate circle plays sports, if participation still costs money, if the space is perceived as belonging to others.
Supply Does Not Create Demand
In most economic sectors, available and accessible supply eventually stimulates latent demand. Sport does not work exactly that way, and research in the social sciences on physical activity has documented this for two decades.
Sports participation is strongly shaped by social norms and group identities. A teenager who grows up in an environment where sport is absent, where no one around them practices, where sports equipment is associated with a social status they do not share, will be little affected by the opening of a gym five minutes from home. What behavioral economists call “environmental nudges” have recognized effectiveness on certain populations already close to the target behavior. Their effectiveness drops sharply among populations furthest from sports practice.
This is precisely the European problem. Public sports policies have historically benefited practitioners more: they have subsidized already-frequented clubs, built infrastructure in areas where practice already existed, funded federations whose members are already active. This model produces good statistics on indicators, but has targeted sedentary young people less directly.
The mechanism is similar to what we observe in other supply-focused public policies. The question of who captures the gains from collective investment arises in sport as it does in the labor market: the beneficiaries are often those already in a position to benefit.
Countries Beginning to Change Focus
Several member states have begun to reorient their policies while maintaining infrastructure development, but by first asking a different question: who is not using these facilities, and why.
The Netherlands has developed a program targeting populations with no history of sports participation by mobilizing sports ambassadors from local communities. The scheme relies on “sports ambassadors” recruited from local communities, not outside sports educators. The idea is that the legitimacy of the invitation to participate comes from peers, not institutions. Preliminary results are encouraging, but long-term data is still lacking.
Finland has integrated physical activity into its national school health program using an approach distinct from most of its neighbors: rather than measuring students’ sports performance, it measures total movement time during the day, including active commuting, recess and physical education classes. This measurement choice signals to students and teachers that the objective is movement, not competition. Studies by the Finnish Education Ministry indicate an increase in average daily movement time among 10-14 year-olds, but the impact on 15-24 year-olds remains difficult to measure.
The Czech Republic has experimented with partnerships between employers and vocational schools to integrate physical activity into vocational training. The targeting here is socio-economic: according to WHO Europe data, young people in vocational training show high rates of sedentary behavior in Central Europe.
Scope and Limits of the School Framework
The limit of the school framework also lies in what it measures: attendance at physical education classes, not the development of independent practice. A young person can accumulate hours of mandatory activity without ever developing the sense of competence or belonging that conditions continuing after school. This sense, built through relationships with peers and the experience of gradual mastery, is what the school institution struggles structurally to produce, due to lack of time and pedagogical flexibility.
School remains the most frequently cited lever by European policymakers when discussing youth inactivity. And for good reason: it is the only moment in life when the state can reach almost all young people simultaneously, regardless of their social situation.
Several member states strengthened their school physical education programs between 2015 and 2024. This evolution contributed to the advance in implementation indicators. But school physical education has a structural limit: it ends at 18, sometimes earlier for young people who leave the school system after short training. Yet a decline in physical activity occurs between 15 and 25, when the institutional framework withdraws.
Research in public health on this subject points to the transition period: a decline in physical activity is observed in older age groups, particularly during transitions between school cycles and toward employment or higher education. School habits transfer unevenly to adult life. They transfer when anchored to a sports identity, a club, a peer group, independent practice. School can plant a seed; it cannot guarantee the harvest.
The technical problem of measuring and encouraging sustained practice after school is of a different nature from that of wearables and physical data that top-level clubs are beginning to use to prevent injuries. There, the tool follows existing performance. Here, the habit would first need to be created.
Levers Europe Has Not Yet Scaled
The European Commission is preparing a strategic vision for sport by 2030. Preparatory documents, still under consultation, identify several angles that national policies have little developed.
The first is the real cost of participation. Free or low-cost public facilities exist in most Western European countries. But sports participation entails associated costs: equipment, travel, federation memberships, club fees. For a household with modest income and one or two teenagers, these costs quickly accumulate. Some Nordic countries have introduced sports voucher systems targeted at low-income families.
These schemes remain marginal across Europe.
The second lever is time. Young people who work early, often part-time in low-skilled jobs with fragmented hours, face time constraints unlike those of higher education students. Sports policies are largely calibrated to a student lifestyle, with time slots in the evening and on weekends. They reach poorly young people in precarious employment. This is a blind spot few countries have begun to address.
The third is the link to mental health. Research on physical activity as a mental health lever has progressed rapidly in the past five years. Young adults are the population most affected by rising anxiety and depression disorders in Europe since 2020. Programs that explicitly integrate this argument—not sport as performance, but movement as an emotional regulator—could reach young people whom the traditional sports framework does not touch.
The Remaining 18% of Indicators and Next Steps
82% of indicators are achieved, leaving 18% not yet met. These 18% correspond to the most complex situations to address through standardized policies, regardless of government willingness.
Missing indicators often concern data collection on inactive populations themselves, integrated monitoring systems between the sports and health sectors, and targeted financing mechanisms for geographic areas with low participation rates. These are precision tools, not mass tools.
The gap between indicators and behavior invites clarification of the function of European sports policies. These have built a solid institutional framework, improved sports governance, secured budgets and created monitoring systems. These are real gains.
Reports of non-participation among 15-24 year-olds declined between 2017 and 2022, but surveys do not allow attributing this change to public policies. These two findings coexist.
The coming decade will test whether Europe can shift from a supply-side policy to a demand-side policy: fewer additional gymnasiums, more schemes that reach young people where they are, with arguments that speak to their actual lives. This transition requires a reformulation of the objective: no longer to achieve implementation indicators, but to measurably reduce total inactivity among the least active young people. The difference between the two is not technical. It is political.
Sources
- WHO Europe Physical Activity Monitoring Framework 2024
- Eurobarometer Sport and Physical Activity 2022, European Commission, special survey no. 525
- European Commission Strategic Vision for Sport (2026 draft), consultation documents, DG EAC
- Netherlands “Sport and Prevention” Program, Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport, reports 2019-2023
