The executive wants a return to serenity in the stadium stands. With this in mind, the National Supporterism Authority (INS) is meeting this Monday morning at the Ministry of Sports to try to curb the violence which has plagued French football, particularly since the start of the season. On December 2, before the Nantes-Nice match, Maxime, 31, a Nantes supporter, died of two stab wounds during an altercation with a VTC driver whose vehicle he had attacked with other supporters, because that he was transporting Nice fans.
Since his death, the public authorities have increased travel bans on supporters. But the Council of State suspended almost every time, and again for several matches this weekend, these ministerial and prefectural decrees, citing “a serious and manifestly disproportionate attack on fundamental freedoms”.
The INS, a non-decision-making structure
The INS plenary session, which opens this Monday at 10:30 a.m. at the Ministry of Sports, should allow Minister Amélie Oudéa-Castéra to resume the dialogue but also to explain her project aimed at stemming the violence.
Continuing the statements of the minister who said she was in favor of a “moratorium on fan travel”, a government source indicated that it would be a question of putting in place at the beginning of January “a moratorium on initiative of the League and the clubs, as part of a broader action plan and with the aim of taking new measures collectively for the future. However, no decision is expected because the INS is not a decision-making structure.
Unlike England or Germany, which have managed to contain violence since the 1990s, “the difficulty France has is not having a clear guideline, being incapable of identifying the violent individuals and to permanently remove them from the stadiums,” explains sociologist Nicolas Hourcade, specialist in fanism and member of the INS. France has focused in recent years on collective ban measures and much less on individual bans: in France there were only 218 people banned from stadiums in July 2023, compared to some 1,600 in England and 1,300 in Germany.