By Per Ake Persson

The European Boxing Union held its General Assembly in Paris this past weekend.

Champion of the Year (for 2014): middleweight Billy Joe Saunders.

Lightweight Emiliano Marsili got a special award for three title defences during 2014.

EBU title fight of the year: Billy Joe Saunders vs Chris Eubank

Promoter of the Year (EBU): OPI 2000 (the Cherchi Family)

Promoter of The Year (EU): Loreni Boxe (Mario Loreni)

Greece is the only new member of the EBU while the Malta Boxing Association (one of the two or three federations active in this tiny country - I´m not the creator of the joke that says they have more federations than fighters there) got provisional status.

Both Latvia and Bosnia & Hercegovina was put back to provisional status - both fail to comply with the EBU safety agreement.

The case of former WBO super middleweight champ Stas Kashtanov got special attention as he is under a medical suspension in Ukraine but has been allowed to fight in Russia.  The lack of respect for suspensions is a hot issue between the EBU members and the many “pirate” (most perfectly legal but non-EBU members) organisations and unified rules is a must but no solution is in sight. Today fighters can spend a weekend getting stopped or knocked out in the same country but on shows sanctioned by different federations and nobody is able to do something about it.

Finally Luxembourg was again denied reaffiliation and continues to pay a price for sanctioning the David Haye vs Dereck Chisora fight in 2012.