Kulturudvalget 2021-22
KUU Alm.del Bilag 228
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Kulturudvalget 2021-22
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Resolution 2420 (2022)
1
Provisional version
Football governance: business and values
Parliamentary Assembly
1.
The Parliamentary Assembly underlines the important role played by sport in general and football in
particular in conveying values that are essential for social cohesion and living together, and in promoting well-
being and social advancement. Football has changed in many ways and it is only natural that it should
continue to do so. It has become a major industry involving huge sums invested in infrastructure, broadcasting
rights, sponsorship, merchandising, equipment sales, gaming and sports betting, etc. Football’s economic
success, particularly that of European football, is to be welcomed. Business must not, however, take
precedence over values: football and sport should not be reduced to money-spinning entertainment, and
sports governance should continue to be rooted in promoting human rights. Upholding such standards must
always be the force driving the major umbrella organisations’ actions, starting with the sporting events they
stage.
2.
Countries wishing to host major sports events must be prepared to assume stringent obligations in
various fields and meet them effectively. For example, their development projects related to sports events
(construction or renewal of sporting, accommodation, communication and transport infrastructure, etc.) and
the planning of the corresponding investments must comply with the criteria of economic, social and
environmental sustainability. They must also ensure the safety of all sports equipment and the security of the
national and foreign audience attending the events, and of people leaving or moving within the areas where
they take place. Likewise, all bidders for major international sport events, such as FIFA (International
Federation of Association Football) and UEFA (Union of European Football Associations) competitions, must
commit in concrete terms to ensuring compliance with key human rights standards.
3.
The Assembly notes that collaboration between host countries, the relevant international sports
federations and human rights organisations can yield valuable results. This was undoubtedly the case in
Qatar. The Assembly commends the efforts of FIFA which played a role in getting the labour law reform
process under way in Qatar and the work of the International Labour Organisation (ILO), the international
trade union movement and non-governmental organisations operating in Qatar. The Assembly also
commends the Qatari authorities for making real advances in this field. The Assembly cannot, however,
express its full satisfaction, as the situation of workers in Qatar remains worrying and the number of tragic
accidents continues to run into the hundreds. The reforms need consolidating to ensure that all economic
operators in the country comply with the new rules, and efforts to solve the issue of unpaid wages and to
improve working conditions for all workers must continue.
4.
The Assembly cannot ignore the harsh working conditions experienced by workers in Qatar since the
country was chosen to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup, and the thousands of work-related injuries, including
fatal ones, during this period (although not all of these were related to World Cup construction sites).
Compliance with ILO’s core labour standards should be a prerequisite for being a credible candidate and not a
target to reach after being chosen to host the FIFA World Cup or any another major sporting event.
1.
Assembly debate
on 26 January 2022 (5th sitting) (see
Doc. 15430,
report of the Committee on Culture, Science,
Education and Media, rapporteur: Lord George Foulkes).
Text adopted by the Assembly
on 26 January 2022 (5th sitting).
See also
Recommendation 2221 (2022).
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Resolution 2420 (2022)
5.
Workers’ rights are not the only ones that need to be taken into account. The Assembly welcomes the
steps taken by FIFA and UEFA in response to its request to include human rights compliance in the
commitments that countries bidding to host major football competitions must enter into, but current regulations
must also be supplemented and tightened.
6.
Requiring that the hosting and staging of the competition and any legacy and post-event related
activities do not involve adverse impacts on internationally recognised human rights is not enough. Firstly,
bidding countries must provide a minimum level of guarantees of respect for human rights, or at least some
specific rights, for their bids to be considered. For example, the Assembly considers that any country where
women do not have the right to participate freely in sport or where there is clear discrimination in their access
to sport should simply be disqualified. Secondly, staging competitions must contribute to real and lasting
progress in the field of human rights.
7.
The Assembly is fully aware that this is a sensitive issue and that sport must remain politically neutral
but believes that strict rules on human rights compliance are coherent with such neutrality and even
strengthen it. The Assembly stands ready to continue working with its partners to find realistic and balanced
solutions together.
8.
The Assembly considers that both protecting under-age players and promoting gender equality, as well
as fighting discrimination on any grounds, should be priorities for all levels of the wider sports movement and
of football organisations in particular. A greater proportion of available resources should be allocated to
measures to achieve these goals.
9.
With regard more specifically to protecting minors, the Assembly welcomes the regulatory
developments and concrete initiatives developed by FIFA and UEFA. In particular, it welcomes the rollout of
the FIFA Guardians™ programme and the toolkit produced with the help of experts from the Council of
Europe and UNICEF, among others, and the
safeguarding.eu
digital platform launched by UEFA in
collaboration with the Terre des hommes Foundation. These are all initiatives that can make a real
contribution to creating a safer environment for children and teenagers who play football.
10. Sexual abuse is unfortunately a reality in sport; so is impunity within the highest ranks of several sports
associations and clubs. The Council of Europe has mobilised efforts to tackle the problem. The “Start to Talk”
initiative calls on member States to take three types of action and a set of tools to develop them. The
Enlarged Partial Agreement on Sport (EPAS) is launching pilot projects to establish networks of child welfare
officers in sport under its Child Safeguarding in Sport scheme. This module will likely be added to the “Start to
Talk” scheme. To date, about 20 Council of Europe countries are using the Organisation’s tools. The
Assembly hopes that the remaining member States will take steps to get involved in this initiative.
11. Both the sports movement and the public authorities must make much greater investments in this area.
The Assembly therefore welcomes the idea (discussed in the context of the EU social dialogue committee by
UEFA, ECA (European Club Association), the European Leagues and FIFPRO (Fédération Internationale des
Associations de Footballeurs Professionnels – World Players’ Union) of setting up a European research
project to map existing standards for the protection of minors in elite academies and for identifying potential
gaps with regard to the rights of the child.
12. The Assembly is also following with great interest a project (which FIFA is considering with other
partners) to set up a Safe Sport centre or agency: a multi-sport, inter-institutional and inter-governmental body
to deal with cases of abuse in sport, providing a pool of services and expertise that could assist all
stakeholders to eradicate abuse in sport, putting the needs of victims first. The Assembly fully supports this
project and hopes that all governments will make a commitment to ensuring it can be implemented quickly.
13. The Assembly is convinced that sport plays a pivotal role in promoting gender equality since its
symbolic value and the messages that it conveys are so powerful. This is particularly the case for football with
its hundreds of millions of (male and female) fans in all four corners of the earth. Accordingly, the Assembly,
while welcoming the progress that has already been made in this field, considers that stakeholder action in
this area should be further enhanced, including in terms of greater financial solidarity between men’s and
women’s football, and given a higher profile.
14. In the current context marked by the damage wrought by the Covid-19 pandemic, including in the world
of sport in general, the Assembly believes that it is time to give thorough consideration to measures that can
help redress the most glaring imbalances in the football ecosystem. Financial disparities between clubs and
leagues are to some extent inevitable; they also depend on each country’s specific socio-economic situation
and the diverging scale of their media markets. The Assembly is, however, concerned about football’s
polarisation and increasing disparities, as well as some blatant financial excesses, and it calls for more
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solidarity within the football system. It believes that the principle of open competitions must be preserved,
considers that UEFA should remain the entity responsible for the organisation of the European club
competitions and firmly opposes the European Super League project.
15. The Assembly attaches great importance to the reform of the transfer system – including new
regulations on agents – undertaken by FIFA in co-operation with other stakeholders, and is convinced that the
main objectives underlying this reform are justified: ensuring transparency of financial flows; reducing
contractual instability and speculation while also setting reasonable limits on the sometimes exorbitant agents'
fees; strengthening redistribution in favour of training clubs; and providing better protection for minors to
prevent exploitation.
16. The Assembly is aware that the competence of FIFA to regulate the profession of agent or intermediary
in the world of football is controversial. Nevertheless, the interests at stake call for uniform regulations at the
global level to avoid distortions on the international transfer market; for the Assembly, FIFA is entitled to adopt
such regulations, provided that the constraints and limitations established therein are reasonable and do not
go beyond what is necessary to protect the legitimate interests in question.
17. The Assembly questions the advisability of the plan currently under consideration by FIFA to hold the
World Cup every two years. It considers that such a change would have disastrous consequences for
European football, which is why both UEFA and the European Leagues are strongly opposed to the project. It
could also harm the entire sports ecosystem by making the two main global sporting events – the World Cup
and the Olympic Games – compete for media coverage and therefore also financial support.
18. The Assembly is closely monitoring the rollout of UEFA’s new format for club competition and would like
to see it improve the revenue redistribution system. The Assembly is also interested in the ongoing discussion
on reforming financial fair play rules which should continue to promote sound management of club finances
and help improve competitive balance.
19. Despite the heavy financial losses incurred during the health crisis, the football industry is poised to
bounce back more quickly than other sectors and, in the Assembly’s view, the sport has a valuable role to
play, particularly at grassroots level. It is crucial that clubs, according to their means, and fans join forces to
revive local socio-economic systems and build their resilience through social responsibility programmes,
which need reinforcing. Despite the fallout of the crisis, this could be an opportunity for football to forge even
stronger ties with communities and let players, fans and their associations play a more important role,
including by increasing their involvement in decision-making processes as part of more inclusive football
governance at all levels.
20. The Assembly therefore calls on FIFA and UEFA to review the conditions that countries bidding to host
major football events must meet in terms of safeguarding human rights and to provide for, if they do not
already:
20.1. a thorough, contextual human rights compliance assessment as one of the key criteria for
accepting any country’s bid; this assessment should be based on up-to-date reports from the relevant
international institutions and/or independent non-governmental organisations recognised for their
competence in the field; in the case of Council of Europe member States, reports and analyses by the
Organisation’s monitoring bodies on compliance with key human rights standards should be taken into
account;
20.2. the requirement to comply with predetermined minimum standards on, for example, workers’
(including migrants’) rights, gender equality (including in sport, but also elsewhere), protecting athletes
of minor age from sexual abuse and all forms of violence, combating discrimination in sport and
safeguarding fundamental civil and political rights, in particular freedom of expression – including media
freedom – and freedom of peaceful assembly, both as regards staging the competitions in question and
otherwise;
20.3. identifying, as part of the thorough assessment, the measures required to meet the minimum
standards set out above, with a timetable for implementation which countries should adhere to for their
bids to be considered, and a human rights action plan which countries must pledge to follow if they win
the bidding process; as regards workers’ rights, the ILO’s role should be systematically highlighted and
host countries should commit to co-operating with the ILO to draw up and carry out the necessary
reforms;
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20.4. the binding nature of these commitments not only by national associations but also – and
especially – by host countries’ governments, given their role in ensuring respect for human rights by all
public bodies and by any private operator under their jurisdiction involved in organising the event in
question;
20.5. setting up effective mechanisms for monitoring compliance with the commitments made,
including specific procedures for regular assessment by independent external stakeholders of the
responses to human rights risks involved in staging the event, as well as mechanisms for direct
dialogue with the public authorities of the host countries to analyse and solve any problems;
20.6. the accessibility of effective remedies in host countries, with independent bodies empowered to
investigate, punish and redress any human rights violations;
20.7. appropriate penalties imposed on host countries and their national associations in the event of
failure to comply with the commitments made or to implement follow-up measures required by
monitoring bodies, including the decision to relocate the competition in question to a different country.
21.
With regard to the protection and human development of minors, the Assembly:
21.1. calls on the International Olympic Committee and all international sports federations, as well as
national sporting bodies, to join FIFA in setting up a Safe Sport centre or agency which is financially
viable and can operate with the collaboration of sporting bodies and public authorities so as to jointly
combat cases of abuse in sport and help the victims of such abuse;
21.2. encourages UEFA, ECA, the European Leagues and FIFPRO to continue their European
research project on existing standards for the protection of minors in elite football academies and for
identifying potential gaps with regards to children’s rights in football;
21.3. calls on FIFA, UEFA, ECA, the European Leagues and FIFPRO to strengthen the elements of
their programmes aimed at young players’ education and human development and urges them to work
together to foster efforts in this regard by national football associations.
22.
With regard to gender equality, the Assembly calls on FIFA and UEFA to:
22.1. encourage, including through the adoption of more stringent provisions, their member
associations to enshrine rules in their statutes to ensure that the composition of their executive boards
and standing or ad hoc committees includes a number of women at least proportional to the number of
female members registered, with a quota of at least 25% of seats reserved for women; compliance with
this minimum quota – which should be gradually raised to 40% within a reasonable timeline – should be
made a prerequisite for receiving development funds;
22.2. promote equal pay and rewards for national team players of any gender by the respective
national associations;
22.3. further strengthen development schemes in women’s football and training programmes to
promote women’s leadership at national level and increase the number of female coaches and
referees, in collaboration with national associations;
22.4. step up their efforts to counter sexual harassment and gender discrimination by reinforcing
liability of their member associations in this respect and by developing, where appropriate, targeted
projects in collaboration with associations in countries where these problems are more prevalent.
23. With regard to the reform of the transfer system, the introduction of FIFA’s clearing house for
international transfers and regulations on football agents, the Assembly:
23.1. calls on the Council of Europe member States to recognise FIFA’s competence to regulate at
global level the football transfer system, including the adoption of rules seeking to ensure protection of
minors, the transparency of financial flows linked to players transfers and a sound framework for the
access to and exercise of the profession of agent or intermediary, also with a view to avoiding conflicts
of interests and exorbitant fees, provided that the constraints and limitations established by these rules
are reasonable and do not go beyond what is necessary to protect the legitimate interests at stake;
23.2. asks FIFA to take due account of the opinion of the Council of Europe Group of States against
Corruption (GRECO) on the reform project and encourages FIFA to continue its collaboration with
GRECO;
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23.3. stresses the importance of ensuring the transparency of all financial flows related to international
transfers and calls on FIFA and other stakeholders to agree that not only commissions but also all
agents’ services fees related to international transfers should gradually be processed through the
clearing house system and that agents and their activity should be subject to compliance assessment
procedures; in this context, the system should include enforceable obligations to provide accurate data
and the power to investigate and fittingly punish any failure to comply with such obligations, while
ensuring robust personal data protection;
23.4. with a view to also ensuring the transparency of financial flows related to national transfers, calls
on the relevant stakeholders to agree to set up, alongside the FIFA clearing house system, national
clearing houses, which should operate according to the same standards so as to ensure uniform data
collection and analysis;
23.5. urges FIFA and all stakeholders to reach a balanced agreement that respects the right of agents
to be remunerated in a manner commensurate with the services they provide to clubs and players, but
prohibits excesses and caps agent fees by establishing a maximum percentage of the gross transfer
price and/or wages that these fees may not exceed and an absolute limit on the total sums that may be
paid to the agent of the releasing club for a transaction;
23.6. calls for an increase in the training compensation paid to clubs in the event of transfers and
proposes that the overall amount of such compensation should be determined so as to be at least
equal to the amount of the agent's fee paid by the club releasing the player.
24.
With regard to transfers of minors, the Assembly calls on FIFA to:
24.1. maintain, for international transfers, the general prohibition of Article 19 of the Regulations on
the Status and Transfer of Players and to postpone the possible extension of the exception concerning
players aged between 16 and 18 years, currently limited to the European Union/European Economic
Area, in particular to prevent this from increasing the risk of exploitation;
24.2. ensure that, in all cases, transfers of minors are subject to very strict conditions, compliance with
which by the national associations and clubs must be verified before granting transfer authorisations;
national associations and clubs should commit to ensure at least:
24.2.1. effective protection of all players of minor age against any form of exploitation and
abuse;
24.2.2. the effective provision, by the clubs to the minor-age players they register, of a stable
environment not only for professional (football) development, but also for education and/or
vocational training, and adequate health and social insurance benefits;
24.2.3. the stability of the contractual relation with the minor-age player at least until the end of
the season of the player’s 18th birthday;
24.2.4. general working conditions no less favourable than those of the other players of the
club and not below the international ILO standards;
24.2.5. the assistance the minor player may need to find his or her place within the hosting
local community;
24.3. draw up, in collaboration with the confederations and FIFPRO, as well as with other partners
and experts:
24.3.1. model provisions to be included in regulations of the confederations and/or of the
national associations on monitoring mechanisms, effective remedies and the system of
sanctions to uphold the protection of minor players;
24.3.2. a guide for transfers of minor-age players and their protection, including all relevant
information, for example on risks of trafficking by fake agents and their phishing and scam
practices on the Internet (as well as ways to detect and avoid them), official procedures for
international transfers, standard rights and obligations of minor-age players and clubs, contact
points at FIFA and confederation/national levels, etc.; this guide should be published on FIFA
and confederations’ websites, in the most common languages, and national associations should
translate and publish it in their respective languages;
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24.4. require, within the new regulatory framework for agents and intermediaries, specific
qualifications for anyone wishing to represent minor-age players, in addition to those needed to obtain
the professional licence, and to set up a public, centralised, international agent register listing all
licensed agents authorised to represent minors, which would be made available via the FIFA website.
25. With regard to FIFA’s current deliberations on whether to hold the World Cup every two years, the
Assembly calls on FIFA not to take decisions that are potentially detrimental to European football and sport
worldwide without the agreement of European stakeholders and the International Olympic Committee.
26. The Assembly invites UEFA to reconsider the criteria retained for allocating the UEFA Champion
League prize money and to reduce the 10-year club coefficient (at present 30 % of the revenue) so that more
resources could be given to solidarity redistribution, seeking to support youth training and education and the
development of women’s football.
27. The Assembly invites the European leagues to establish a solidarity fund, which could be fed by a small
percentage of TV rights received at national level by the richest leagues; this fund could be designed to
finance projects (including joint projects involving different leagues) in line with strategic development goals
predefined by the European leagues. In the context of recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic, such a fund
could also be intended to support projects elaborated and implemented in collaboration with fans
associations.
28. Finally, the Assembly call on all stakeholders to value institutional dialogue among themselves, ensure
more inclusive decision making, encourage effective involvement of players’ and fans’ representatives in
football governance at all levels, and reinforce collaboration and co-ordination of actions they implement to
support football balanced development, also to avoid that resources available for solidarity be misused
because of overlapping initiatives and duplication of efforts.
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