Europe’s getting ready to move with MOVE Week

14/08/2014

Next month Europe’s biggest community sport and physical activity event, MOVE Week, kicks off in 33 countries all over the continent and beyond. An expected 1,000,000 participants will dance, run, ride their bikes and move in almost any way imaginable throughout the week.

More than 2,000 events will take place in Europe and as far away as the French overseas department of Guadeloupe in the Caribbean. Here, the city of Lamentin will host a family march around the island. The rest of the events are as diverse as trail running in the Romanian mountains, orienteering in Poland, a treasure hunt in Malta, scuba diving in Bulgaria and night bike riding in Greece.

MOVE Week is the flagship event of the NowWeMOVE campaign, which has a vision of getting 100 million more Europeans active in sport and physical activity by 2020. Movement is so important because lack of physical activity is actually a bigger threat to public health than smoking. Two thirds of the adult population over 15 years in Europe do not reach the recommended level of physical activity, which is 30 minutes per day on most weekdays. As a consequence physical inactivity is estimated to attribute to one million deaths, about 10 % of the total number of deaths, per year in Europe.

To get an overview of the events happening in your country, please visit the ‘Events’ page.