On Wednesday 14 January, seven MEPs belonging to the European Democratic Party (EDP), including Italy’s Sandro Gozi, France’s Christophe Grudler and Germany’s Christine Singer, called on the institutions of the European Union and the Member States to introduce “clear, public and verifiable guarantees for the protection of European supporters, sports delegations and institutional representatives” who will be travelling to the United States in June for the FIFA World Cup.
They denounce “a growing sense of legal uncertainty” caused by the Trump administration’s migration policy, which includes “visa restrictions on European citizens, opaque migration controls, extensive use of data from social networks, and security operations marked by the contested use of force”.
The European Commission and the Member States are invited to set up “a European assistance centre for travellers and supporters”, which would provide guidelines and ensure real-time monitoring of any incidents. FIFA and UEFA should incorporate “binding minimum standards on human rights protection, nondiscrimination and legal certainty in protocols with the host country” and provide emergency legal assistance mechanisms. The US authorities should undertake, in writing, to exclude all practices that are arbitrary, based on political opinions or using profiling tools that lack democratic guarantees.
In the absence of such guarantees, the MEPs call on European national football federations and UEFA institutions to “consider the possibility of non-participation of European teams in the phase of the tournament hosted in the United States”.
To see the MEPs’ letter: https://aeur.eu/f/k8l (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)