2023-12-18 10:17:24
The National Supporterism Authority (INS) is meeting this Monday, December 18 at the Ministry of Sports to try to eradicate violence in French football. This plenary session takes place two weeks after the death of a Nantes supporter and an autumn studded with increasingly serious acts.
It was two weeks ago and, by far, the most dramatic incident in a dark series of violence in French football. On December 2, just before the Nantes-Nice match, Maxime, 31, a Nantes supporter, died of two stab wounds during an altercation with a VTC driver whose vehicle he had attacked with other supporters, because that he was transporting Nice fans. The National Supporterism Authority (INS) is meeting at the Ministry of Sports this Monday, December 18 in the hope of reaching viable measures and solutions.
Attack on the OL bus in Marseille, rocking of the Brest supporters’ bus, attack on little Enzo during a match between Ajaccio and OM: far from calming down with the coercive measures applied to the most problematic supporters, violence increased this fall on the sidelines of football matches.
The plenary session will be an opportunity for Sports Minister Amélie Oudéa-Castéra to resume the dialogue but also to explain her project aimed at stemming the violence. No decision is expected, as the INS is not a decision-making structure. Continuing the declarations of the minister who said she was in favor of a “moratorium on supporter travel”, a government source told AFP that it would be a question of putting in place “a moratorium on the initiative of the League and the clubs, as part of a broader action plan and with the objective of taking new measures collectively for the future”, at the beginning of January.
“We can’t continue like this in football, it’s not possible.”
The Minister of Sports Amélie Oudéa-Castéra (@AOC1978) calls for “radical measures” after the death of a supporter in Nantes this weekend, particularly regarding fan travel.#le710inter pic.twitter.com/cjjTFHKOpp
— France Inter (@franceinter) December 4, 2023
Unlike England or Germany, which have managed to contain violence since the 1990s, “France’s difficulty is not having a clear guideline, being incapable of identifying the violent individuals and to permanently remove them from the stadiums,” sociologist Nicolas Hourcade, specialist in fanism and member of the INS, explained to AFP. In recent years, France has focused on collective ban measures and much less on individual bans: there were only 218 people in France banned from stadiums in July 2023, compared to some 1,600 in England and 1,300 in Germany.
Since the death of the Nantes supporter, the public authorities have increased bans on fan travel. On Sunday, Beaujoire paid tribute to him with a giant tarpaulin, a black t-shirt worn by the players during warm-ups and a minute of silence. For its part, the Council of State suspended almost every time, and again for several matches this weekend, these ministerial and prefectural decrees, citing “a serious and manifestly disproportionate attack on fundamental freedoms”.
At the Vélodrome stadium in Marseille on Sunday, several banners from supporters in both corners castigated these collective sanctions: “bans to mask your incompetence”, “Justice cancels your orders, the police no longer apply your orders, ultimately it is up to you to stop” or even “a summit meeting tomorrow for still unsuitable and liberticidal solutions”.
#meeting #Liberation