The deputies adopted (, Thursday, March 23, the provision proposed by the government which aims to create two offenses punishing “illegal entry into a sports arena” and the fact “to enter or remain on its competition area without legitimate reason”. This provision is included in the bill “relating to the Olympic and Paralympic Games (JOP) and containing various other provisions”.
According to the government, this is to ensure that incidents that occurred during the final of the Football Champions League at the end of May 2022, with fraudulent intrusions into the Stade de France enclosure, in Saint -Denis (Seine-Saint-Denis).
The provision may also concern actions by environmental activists, for example, insofar as these would lead to the disruption or interruption of sporting events, as has taken place in recent months – at Roland-Garros in particular. This led opposition MPs Nupes to challenge it and seek, unsuccessfully, to remove it.
“The organization of the Olympic and Paralympic Games should not be used as a pretext to operate a safe shift, yet this is what the text proposesthus denounced Jean-Claude Raux (Europe Ecology-The Greens). Article 12 “does not explicitly recognize the exercise of the rights to freedom of conscience, expression and peaceful assembly as legitimate motivations”, these are not my words but those of Amnesty International”.
“Named, dematerialized and tamper-proof” tickets
The deputies in this case voted for the text which had initially been proposed by the government, before being modified by the senators during the examination of the text in January: only people acting as a repeat offender or in a meeting are likely to be punished with a fine of 7,500 euros, isolated first-time offenders being liable to a fine of 1,500 euros (fifth class contraventional fine), whereas the senators had decided that these isolated first-time offenders would be liable to a fine of 3,750 euros.
The article adopted by the National Assembly also establishes “an obligation for the organizers of the most important sporting events” to use tickets “nominative, dematerialized and tamper-proof”. This provision was introduced and voted on by senators in January. It was among the recommendations made by the Senate’s law and culture committees in a joint report written following the incidents at the Stade de France.
Mandatory stadium bans for certain offenses
The deputies also voted for the measure proposed by the government on stadium bans (article 13 of the bill) made compulsory, unless there is special justification from the judicial judge, for the perpetrators of criminal offences: introduction of alcohol, access to the stadium in a state of drunkenness, incitement to hatred and violence, throwing of dangerous projectiles, illegal entry into the playground.
During the examination in committee, the deputies had removed the introduction of smoke bombs from this list, “as long as these pyrotechnic devices are not used as projectiles presenting a danger to the safety of persons”. The president of the law commission, Sacha Houlié, had recalled, in this regard, that“an experiment is currently being carried out to regulate the use of smoke bombs in the stands of certain stadiums”.
In committee, MEPs had also reduced the maximum duration of administrative stadium bans to twelve months, and to twenty-four months in the event of a repeat offense (i.e. if, in the previous three years, the person has already subject to a ban).