Italy won't sit in the Executives of the European Federations of baseball and softball

Jan Esselman of The Netherlands is the new President of the Confederation of European Baseball (CEB). He defeated Vojco Korosec of Slovenia (15-7) in the voting, while 6 of the 28 Federations eligible to vote posted a blank form.
Peter Kurz of Israel is the first Vice President, Juergen Elsishans of Germany is the second Vice President and Petr Ditrich of the Czech Republic is the third Vice President.
Matts Franson (Sweden), Michael Manning (Ireland), Didier Seminet (France), Monique Schmidt (Switzerland) and Valentinas Bobulis (Lithuania) are the 5 Members at Large.

André Van Overbeek of The Netherlands has been re elected as the President of the European Softball Federation (ESF). He defeated Totoni Sanna of Italy 17-11 in the voting, while 2 forms went blank.
Ami Baran (Israel) is the New Secretary General (he succeeded Francesca Fabretto, who withdrew her candidature), while Eddy Van Straelen (Belgium) was confirmed as the Treasurer.
The 6 Vice Presidents are: Gabriel Waage (Czech Republic-1st Vice President), Youry Alkalay (Bulgaria), John Austin (Ireland), Anne Mette Niessen (Denmark), Gabriel Tobbak (Belgium) and Dejan Jesic (Serbia)

The Italian Baseball and Softball Federation (FIBS) decided to sit out of both Executives. Vice President Massimo Fochi made it clear on the reasons why he withdrew his candidature as the first Vice President CEB: "Together with the Federation of the Netherlands (KNBSB) we have been discussing a global european project for baseball and softball over the last 18 months. We seemed to agree on the point that Totoni Sanna of Italy was the right man to lead the European Softball Federation (ESF). Once we got to the Congress in Bled, we understood that KNBSB had been campaigning to have dutch representative André Van Overbeek re elected as ESF President. We don't have nothing personal against André, but we simply believe he is not the right man for the job. During the last 4 years, he showed he doesn't really support a global project for baseball and softball. It looks like KNBSB is more interested in chairs then their officials are in supporting a project. Due to the fact the dutch Federation showed 2 different attitudes towards 2 different elections that were supposed to be part of the same project, Italy is not interested in being part of that".

Totoni Sanna, who is the other Vice President of FIBS, added: "I have been part of the ESF Executive since 2004, but in Bled it looked like we didn't have the reliable partners we thought we had. As soon as we figured out that we could be part of an ESF Executive made mainly of countries that do not see a common project for baseball and softball a priority, we understood that we could not be part of that. It would have been like turning our back to the idea of a common Olympic bid or to the idea of a merge between IBAF and ISF, the International Federations. That's why FIBS decided to sit out of the Executive".