ZAGREB, September 18, 2020 – Members of the Croatian Parliament on Friday supported the Council of Europe’s Convention on an Integrated Approach to Safety, Security and Service at Football Matches and Other Sports Events.
Presenting the document, the interior ministry’s State-Secretary, Zarko Katic, said that incidents occurred too frequently at football matches as a consequence of poor security management at stadiums.
“Violence is on the rise both inside stadiums and outside as well as in city centres,” Katic said.
The purpose of the Convention is to ensure that football and other sports events provide a safe, secure and welcoming environment for all individuals through the implementation of an integrated approach on safety, security and service at sports events by a plurality of actors working in a partnership amid an ethos of co-operation.
However, Marko Milanovic Litre of the Homeland Movement (DP) bench said that he saw the adoption of the Convention as the continuation of rigorous, unjust and discriminatory policies towards a social minority (football fan groups), who he said, demonstrated fairness and integrity and well as unselfish commitment at local and national levels. This DP deputy criticised the practice of keeping records of citizens who attend football events at stadiums as something that can undermine individual rights and freedoms.
the Council of Europe’s Convention on an Integrated Approach to Safety, Security and Service at Football Matches and Other Sports Events, which was adopted in Saint-Denis on 3 July 2016, took effect on 1 November 2017.
To date 33 members of the Council of Europe have signed the document, and 16 of them have ratified it.
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