On Wednesday, October 2, 2024, the Faculty of Law in Rijeka organized a round table “Basketball and Sports Diplomacy Day” organized by the Institute for Sports Law, Sports Policies and Sports Diplomacy and the EU Sports Law, Policy & Diplomacy Jean Monnet Chair and the Center for Sport of the University of Rijeka.
Introductory and welcoming speeches were given by Prof. dr. Dario Đerđa, Dean of the Faculty of Law in Rijeka; Prof. dr. Snježana Prijić Samaržija, Madam Rector of the University of Rijeka, and Nikola Rukavina, President of the Croatian Basketball Association. As an introduction to the topic, Assoc. Prof. Vanja Smokvina gave a short lecture on sports diplomacy, highlighting examples of good practice from the USA, France and China with suggestions on how smaller countries like Croatia, which are at the same time extremely successful in the field of sports, can do a lot through sports diplomacy, both in terms of promoting the country and in terms of diplomatic and economic relations.
Then came the central event, which was attended by the famous basketball players Stojko Vranković, Aleksandar Petrović and Dalibor Bagarić. They recalled 1991 when Stojko Vranković and Dražen Petrović peacefully protested in front of the UN building, as NBA players at the time, focusing the public and American media on the war in Croatia. A special topic of the meeting was the 1992 Barcelona Summer Olympics and the importance of that sports competition and its results for the promotion of our country. The discussion highlighted the importance of basketball on a European and global scale. Basketball, as a global sport and a sport that, at the very beginning of the independence of the Republic of Croatia, made Croatia visible on the world map, was discussed with a bit of nostalgia for those great results, with hope and optimism that, with young and great basketball players, we will soon be at the very top of the world again, as Croatian basketball deserves. The round table marked the beginning of the academic year and was a kind of introduction to the course EU Sports Law, Policy and Diplomacy of the Integrated University Study of Law, which is attended by students of the University of Rijeka and incoming Erasmus + and YUFE students at the University of Rijeka.
