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Opinion 290 (2015)
Draft Council of Europe Convention on an Integrated Safety, Security and Service Approach at Football Matches and Other Sports Events
1. The Parliamentary Assembly welcomes
the initiative of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe
in drawing up a Council of Europe Convention on an Integrated Safety,
Security and Service Approach at Football Matches and Other Sports
Events. 
2. It unreservedly concurs with both the aims of the new convention
and the multi-agency, integrated approach of the draft convention,
which is actually the only approach capable of ensuring maximum effectiveness
of the system for combating violence inside and outside stadiums.
The Assembly believes that this reflects clear added value of the
new convention compared with the European Convention on Spectator Violence
and Misbehaviour at Sports Events and in particular at Football
Matches (ETS No. 120).
3. The Assembly notes that the draft convention takes account
both of the need to respect the specific features of national systems
and the autonomy of the partner sports organisations and of the
need to establish the regulatory framework and the mechanisms required
for effective and co-ordinated action by all the stakeholders involved.
It welcomes this outcome and, with regard to the substantive provisions,
wishes to make only two comments:
3.1. in
Article 4, it would be appropriate to highlight that the Parties
shall ensure proper risk assessment, based on relevant data;
3.2. Article 7, in the second sentence, uses the modal verb
“shall” in the conditional (“should”), whereas the obligation provided
for in the first sentence cannot be met unless the exercises mentioned in
this second sentence are initiated, supervised and certified and
hence also unless an agency is clearly entrusted with the task.
4. The Assembly believes that both it and the Congress of Local
and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe could make a useful
contribution, once the new convention comes into force, to monitoring
its implementation, in particular by taking part, without the right
to vote, in the Committee on Safety and Security at Sports Events
to be set up under Article 13 of the convention.
5. The Assembly believes that technical amendments in some of
the final clauses would be appropriate; it refers in this context
to the comments and explanations set out in the explanatory memorandum
to the report by the Committee on Culture, Science, Education and
the Media (Doc. 13913).
6. The Assembly suggests that the new convention should explicitly
refer to the threats which can originate from terrorism, thus showing
that the new convention is also intended to be part of the response
to these threats.
7. The Assembly therefore recommends that the Committee of Ministers
make the following amendments to the draft convention:
7.1. in the preamble, insert the
following new paragraph: “Having regard to Opinion 290 (2015), adopted
by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe on 27 November
2015”;
7.2. in Article 4, insert the following new paragraph 4.2 (or
4.4): “The Parties shall ensure that co-ordination arrangements
are established to identify, analyse and evaluate the risks pertaining
to safety, security and services, and to allow the sharing of updated
information on risk assessment”;
7.3. in the second sentence of Article 7, replace “should”
by “shall”;
7.4. at the beginning of Article 13.4, insert the following
new sentence: “The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe
and the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council
of Europe may each appoint one representative to attend the committee’s
meetings, without the right to vote”;
7.5. draft Article 16.4 as follows: “4. When depositing its
instrument of ratification, acceptance or approval in accordance
with the preceding paragraph, a Contracting State may declare that
it will continue to apply Convention No. 120 until the entry into
force of this Convention according to the provisions of Article
17.1”;
7.6. delete Article 19.2;
7.7. if deemed desirable in order to ensure continuity between
Convention No. 120 and the new convention, add a new paragraph 3
to Article 17, worded as follows: “3. Following denunciation of Convention
No. 120, a State may declare that the provisions of this Convention
shall apply to it on a provisional basis until such time as its
ratification enters into force in accordance with the provisions
of Article 17.2 of this Convention”;
7.8. in the explanatory report to the draft convention, make
an explicit reference to the threat of terrorism, adding a new sentence
at the end of paragraph 14 as follows: “These are risks which can originate
from different causes, for instance natural disasters, terrorist
attacks, infrastructure failures, violence of any kind and misbehaviour”;
7.9. if applicable, make the necessary amendments to the explanatory
report to the draft convention so as to reflect the amendments to
the draft text.
8. Lastly, the Assembly recommends that all member States initiate
as quickly as possible the necessary internal procedures for the
ratification of the new convention.