Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-07-06-Speech-4-239"
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"en.20000706.10.4-239"2
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"Mr President, I will start by declaring an interest, because I have been a Class 1 football referee for 18 years now and I am attached to the English FA, and also by congratulating both France for winning the Euro 2000 championship in such a fantastic way, and alas, begrudgingly Germany for winning the World Cup bid for 2006.
I also want to make sure that we actually condemn hooligans in a very strong way in this House; all hooligans whatever country they come from and whatever their background. I note what Mr Van Hecke said about the repatriation of a number of English football fans on C130 planes. It was a great shame in fact that the Belgian police overreacted in such a way by clearing bars of decent ordinary football-loving supporters, taking them with the dross that are the football hooligans.
The question is: what message was sent out by the football authorities going back a number of months before the Euro 2000 championship? We had a problem with two Leeds fans being murdered in a UEFA Cup game in Istanbul against Galatasaray, yet no action was taken against Galatasaray – they were not thrown out of the UEFA Cup.
In Denmark when Galatasaray played Arsenal, a number of Arsenal fans were arrested yet not charged with hooliganism. Then we have the inaction by the British government, which chose not to impose any extra sanctions on stopping people from travelling, even though they knew they might cause trouble. So all these factors actually led to a number of people thinking: "Well this Euro 2000 championship is a soft touch. We should be allowed to go there, and we are going to go and have a good fight", instead of watching the wonderful festival of football that it should have been.
This Parliament and others on the outside should step back, because we have a breathing space now where we can take a reasoned view of what actions we should realistically take against football hooligans, and compare that with the rights of people to freely move about our continent."@en1
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