The executive committee of the Confederation of European Baseball (CEB) gathered at the CEB Offices in Zagreb, Croatia last weekend. On Thursday CEB announced several results from the meeting.
- The biggest news is the awarding of the 2018 European Championship to Bonn and Solingen, Germany. Just a week after announcing that the 2016 European Championship will be held in Hoofddorp, Netherlands, CEB already secured a host for the 2018 continental championship. It will be the second time that Bonn and Solingen will be hosts of a European Championship after organizing the 2001 Euros together with Cologne. It will be the sixth time overall that Germany is organizing a European Championship and the first time that they will do it alone after 2010 in Stuttgart, Heidenheim and Neuenburg. Last year Regensburg hosted a first-round group in cooperation with the Czech Baseball Association.
- The 2016 U12 European Championship was awarded to Trebic, Czech Republic. The Juveniles European Championship was held in Miejska Gorka, Poland this year and will be a qualifier for the 2017 U12 Baseball World Cup in Tainan City. Trebic hosted the U21 European Championship in 2014.
- The executive of CEB approved the already announced new foreigner rule for European Club competitions. Starting on January 1, 2016 basically all European players are no longer considered as foreign players: The participation of foreign players in the Cup competitions is regulated as follows: The players who have a different nationality than that of the country the team represents and have a different nationality than one of the CEB Member Federations, are considered foreign players.
- And last but not least three CEB commissions got new members: Jordi Valles (Spain) was named to the Technical Commission, Stephanie Winkler (Germany) to the Scorer Commission and Christian Posny (Germany) to the Umpire Commission.
Photo by Walter Keller, www.caththefever.de