UEFA prepare for ticket rethink

By Jonathan Hill

Final text
Both the European Parliament and a number of member states, including France and Germany, have criticised the plans, which the European Commission published last year and it now seems very unlikely that the various institutions will agree a final text before the end of this year. Some governments and Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) have even suggested that the Commission start again and entirely rewrite the proposal.

Genuine internal market
The aim of the Directive is to complete a genuine internal market in services by removing legal and administrative barriers between member states of the EU. It would bring in new rules for the benefit of a wide variety of service-providers, giving them the legal certainty they need to establish themselves in other member states. At the heart of the directive is the so-called 'country of origin' principle, which says that any person should be able to offer his services anywhere in the European Union, provided he respects the laws of his own member state.

Potential impact
The directive's potential impact on football lies in the area of ticket sales for international tournaments. Identifying some of the problems the Directive is trying to tackle, the European Commission refers to "refusals to offer services simply on the grounds that [customers] are nationals of a particular member state or are resident in a particular country. Problems of this kind ... have been reported in several areas, including, for example, participation in sporting or cultural events". But any attempt to impose a single-market approach on ticketing would undermine the well-established right of organisers of football events, such as UEFA, to restrict the distribution of tickets to their events along national lines, so as to ensure segregation of rival fans and to reduce the risk of hooliganism.

Crucial clause
UEFA is therefore seeking reassurances from the EU institutions that the directive would in no way disturb its ability to continue ticket distribution along national lines. If the EU confirmed that the directive would in fact apply to ticket distribution, then UEFA would invoke a crucial clause in the draft text, which allows for "differences in the conditions of access where those differences are directly justified by objective criteria". In other words, UEFA would argue that public security was precisely one such criterion justifying an exemption from the directive.

Previous decision
UEFA can already point to a previous European Commission decision in which the EU's executive considered that public security was "a legitimate aim of ticketing policy" and segregation of spectators from different countries was "an appropriate measure to attempt to tackle such problems".

Final decision
With the political backlash against the Services Directive growing by the day, EU leaders have now agreed to rewrite large parts of the proposals, which will only delay a final decision on the text, probably into next year.

This is an abridged and edited version of an article by the head of UEFA's Brussels office Jonathan Hill, which appears in the latest edition of the official UEFA publication uefadirect.