“Hansjörg has left us in a healthy financial situation,” he tells insidethegames. “We have a good TV contract and one big sponsor. But there are still a lot of things to work on.

“We have some quite radical changes in mind.

“And it’s not going to be any longer from the top down.

“I believe in teamwork, and I will be involving my colleagues fully in any discussions about future changes. It’s going to be a two-way communication.

“People are not interested in listening to what I am saying. The views need to come from throughout the Federation. So there are a lot of steps to be taken.”

While athletics will be represented at this inaugural area multi-sports event, it will only be the Third League of the European Team Championships - albeit that that means home crowds will be able to see their own athletes competing.

And shortly before he left office, Wirz told insidethegames that he could not confirm athletics would figure in future European Games.

“I don’t think it is the proper value for athletics,” he said. “If it’s going to be included in the European Games it should be of a stronger standard.”

Discussing the issue with the European Olympic Committees President, Patrick Hickey, Hansen added, was one of the first things he would do if elected. “I think we have to see what kind of guarantees we can get between European Athletics and the European Games,” he said.

Well now he is elected - and he foresees meeting Hickey during the first week of the European Games, to which he will travel after attending the European Athletics Council meeting in Oslo from June 12 untl 14.

“Pat sent me a very, very nice letter after I was elected and I’m trying to find when we can meet to discuss matters,” Hansen says. “If not before, I hope to speak to him when I visit the European Games in Baku. So it will most probably be June 15 or 16 - but if we can meet before then that will be great.”

Hansen adds that his comments to insidethegames about wanting to work out a suitable high profile presence for his sport at the European Games had received a very positive response within European Athletics circles.

“The reactions I got were fantastic,” he says. “All but one of the comments I got from Council members and people involved with European Athletics were favourable.

The ebullient Norwegian has already made his mark on the sport he loves with 50 years of service with the Bislett Games in Oslo, for which he was meeting director from 1985 to 2009.

He has been vice-president, too, of European Athletics, from 2007 until 2011. But now he has the job he sought, and this week he will visit the European Athletics HQ in Lausanne to fully acquaint himself with the details of the job in hand.

Pictures from Bled of him chairing newly elected European Athletics Council showed Lamine Diack, President of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), at his right hand.

“It was very good for the stature of European Athletics to have the IAAF President, Lamine Diack, attending our Council,” he says.

Now he has been elected, he plans to bring IAAF Council members from Europe in to meet once a year with the European Athletics Council. “We need to have regular discussion of policies and views, and to see the roads where we will stand together,” he says.

 “I will work hard to ensure that Europe gets its fair share of the cake from the International Federation. Because Europe is the heartland of athletics.

“People understand that Europe is the bread and butter of athletics. If Europe falls, athletics falls.”

Hansen saw both the prospective candidates to take over the IAAF Presidency when Diack retires in August – Sebastian Coe and Sergey Bubka.

He knows both men of old - and he remains diplomatically neutral on which he would prefer to see in office. But for him, it’s a win-win scenario.

“I think it’s important we have a man who can lead the IAAF to new heights,” he says. “Both candidates were excellent athletes - I hope they will also be excelling in leadership.

“Whichever man gets in it will be good for European Athletics to have a European IAAF President again. I’m sure there would be a change in the relationship that would benefit us.

“Hansjörg said the other day that European Athletics gets less than five per cent of its income from the IAAF. If you ask me, I think Europe is worth more.

“I will fight for Europe as much as I can.”

Taking a broad view of his new task, Hansen adds: “We have a lot of ideas, and a lot of challenges.”

And it seems fair to say there will be numerous changes to be discussed at the Oslo European Athletics Council meeting.

“I don’t see Commissions so much in the future,” Hansen says.

“We will of course be keeping key elements like the Development and Competition Commission, and the Athletes Commission.

“But I don’t we will have any longer for instance the Reflection Commission. We don’t want to look backwards and sit around to talk about what happened and what went wrong. Now we have to look forwards.

“We are establishing a number of working parties, and this will be one of the areas we look at.

“These will be small working groups, with very few people in them. We will be looking at the marketing situation, and also at our communications.

“One of the other things we will try and do is to make the European Congress much more attractive to all 50 of the Member Federations.

“Over the next couple of weeks we will be asking Member Federations to put forward names of those they would like to be included in different working groups.”

Among the other plans floated in Hansen’s election manifesto was the idea of having some European-only races at one-day meetings in Europe.

“Whether it is IAAF Diamond League meeting, or an IAAF Challenge, or an EA meeting, there should be some event which is European competitors only,” he says, “especially in the men’s middle distance. This happened in the past during IAAF Golden League meetings.

“Of course we have to work together with the IAAF on this, but I cannot see why they should be against us if we make it an area feature – so that in Shanghai, for instance, you have a race for Asian athletes only in the Diamond League, and the same in Doha with Middle East athletes.

“It is very, very important for some events to have only Europeans."

He also suggests in his manifesto that the European Team Championships be  “restructured”.

“They are not working commercially,” he says. “Maybe if we had it in the same city for three or four years in a row it would be a good thing. Maybe we could do the same thing for half-marathon championships.

“Last year’s Team Championships in Braunschweig were very successful. But I watched the Team Championships in Stockholm in 2011 and the Olympic stadium was half empty and I think that was sad.  That is not what we want to see for a major event like the European Team Championships.”

This, too, will be the subject of a working group’s deliberations. “There are so many good people in Europe we can use in the future,” Hansen adds.

“I don’t look on the European Athletics Presidency as a job,” he adds. “I want to do it because I have a vision. And I have so many friends in Europe who are sharing that vision.

"I am 68. I am a stamp dealer with my own business. So I don’t need to work. But I don’t do this as a job - I do it because I believe in our sport.”

Now that he is in the job, however, he is a full-time paid employee of European Athletics - a new stipulation for the position which both he and his predecessor would like to see in place at the IAAF also.

“This is a full-time paid job now, and that is how it should be,” Hansen says with a chuckle. “For the next four years, the turnover for Hansen Stamps will be less in future than for many, many years!”