After presenting his first proposals to the Board of Directors of the Professional Football League (LFP) this Friday morning, Alain Bauer – professor at the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers and head of the Security, Defence, Intelligence, Criminology, Cyber Threats and crises – detailed the reforms envisaged after around fifty interviews with various actors. The report, commissioned by the LFP last June after a series of excesses, is expected between mid-October and the end of October.
For Alain Bauer, it is essential to “re-establish a dialogue, an essential element. But many supporters say that we do not listen to them. The idea is not to be more punishing, it is to be more open, including on experiments in controlled pyrotechnics. The supporters must become partners, including the ultras. They are necessary and useful partners in life, in the spectacle and in the celebration of football. The idea is not to be more punitive, the general idea is to avoid having to become one. »
The academic suggests a decentralized logic for the management of sporting events, bringing together around a table the club, the supporters, the State, the municipality, to move towards a “contractualization” between stakeholders. “We must start talking to them again, dialogue, find partnerships, ways, and the judicial system must be within the contracts,” he argues.
“Turkish” system and certification mechanism under study
“We are in a partnership and contractual framework. Everyone makes commitments. And we must get out of the collective sanction (such as travel bans, behind closed doors or withdrawal of points, Editor’s note). We must keep it as the ultimate argument, but a deterrent that we use all the time is no longer a deterrent,” he notes.
Among his concrete proposals on ticketing, we find the possibility of a “Turkish” device, namely a fan card to access the stadiums, or a mechanism for certifying the holder of a ticket already used during a concert. of Ed Sheeran at the Stade de France.
The 2021-2022 football season was tumultuous as rarely in French stadiums, between the throwing of projectiles, the deployment of smoke bombs or the invasion of the pitch, up to the organizational failures of the Champions League final at the Stade de France.
A media figure and regular on television sets, Alain Bauer (60) was notably mandated in 2011 by the Minister of the Interior at the time, Brice Hortefeux, to co-write a “white paper on public security”.