MEPs are making demands on UEFA: they want both Russian and Belarusian football teams to be banned. UEFA President Ceferin promises discussions on this.
After demands from EU parliamentarians, the European Football Association wants to discuss a possible exclusion of teams from Belarus.
This was announced by UEFA President Aleksander Ceferin in a letter to members of the EU Parliament, which was presented to the German Press Agency on Friday. “It has long been UEFA’s intention to discuss the situation in Belarus at the next meeting of our Executive Committee,” Ceferin wrote.
The meeting will take place in Lisbon on April 4th. A day later, the UEFA Congress will also take place in Portugal, where Ceferin will be re-elected unopposed for a third and final term. “We would like to assure you that the situation in Belarus is being thoroughly examined from a factual and legal point of view,” said the 55-year-old Slovenian.
EU parliamentarians call for exclusion
MEPs had called for the exclusion not only of teams from Russia but also from Belarus because of the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine. UEFA is closely monitoring the worrying developments “that you mentioned in your letter,” Ceferin wrote in the letter. The decisions to be made in this regard would “exclusively” fall within the competence of the UEFA Executive Committee, it said.
The Russian Alexander Dyukov also sits on the executive committee. The president of the Russian Football Association and Gazprom manager has retained his post because the world governing body FIFA and UEFA only suspended Russian teams. The Russian and Belarusian associations are also members of UEFA and FIFA.
The organization Belarusian Sport Solidarity Foundation (BSSF), which works for oppressed athletes in Belarus, has repeatedly unsuccessfully asked FIFA and UEFA for the domestic association to be suspended. “Belarus is an aggressor like Russia in the war against Ukraine, that’s quite obvious,” BSSF board member Alexander Apeikin said in an interview with the ARD “Sportschau” last July. (dpa)