Can the state allow the DFL to contribute to the costs of police operations at football games? Or does ensuring public safety have to be paid for by taxpayers? The Federal Constitutional Court is hearing this today.
When Dortmund plays against Schalke, Hamburger SV competes in the city derby against St. Pauli or the northern derby against Werder Bremen or other clubs with long-standing rivalries meet – then football games become a major operation for the police.
In order to ensure security in German football, a total of 1.6 million police working hours were spent in the first and second Bundesliga alone in the 2022/23 season. This corresponds to the working hours of around 1,238 full-time police officers. A good 1,200 police officers – many millions of euros – to ensure order around the stadiums. In some other countries, the leagues or clubs contribute to these costs. In Germany the taxpayer pays for everything.
Bremen wants to contribute to King Football’s costs
At least so far, because in 2014 the smallest federal state of Bremen created the conditions to make king football pay. Since then, Paragraph 4 of the Bremen Fees and Contributions Act states:
A fee is charged by organizers who hold a profit-oriented event in which more than 5,000 people are expected to take part at the same time, if experience shows that violent acts are to be expected before, during or after the event at the event location, on the access or exit routes or otherwise The deployment of additional police forces will foreseeably become necessary in the spatial environment.
It’s about additional costs for high-risk games
Bremen does not want to have the entire cost of police operations reimbursed, but only the additional costs for events where additional police forces are required. In football, this is the case with the so-called high-risk games. Instead of a few hundred police officers, there are often a thousand or more police officers providing security at these games, such as derybs.
In the northern derby Werder Bremen against HSV on April 19, 2015, Bremen got serious and, after prior announcement, issued a fee notice for 425,718.11 euros to the German Football League (DFL).
The DFL is the association of the 36 football clubs in the Bundesliga and the men’s 2nd Bundesliga. It has full marketing rights to the two leagues and acts as an organizer alongside the clubs themselves. Because she didn’t want to cover the costs, the matter ended up in court.
In May 2017, the Bremen Administrative Court declared the cost sharing in accordance with the Bremen Fees and Contributions Act to be unlawful in the first instance. However, the Bremen Higher Administrative Court decided in the appeal in February 2018: The DFL must pay. Bremen had waived a few thousand euros in the proceedings, so that now only 415,000 euros were involved. In March 2019, the Federal Administrative Court in Leipzig also confirmed Bremen’s actions in its appeal.
The German Football League is appealing against these judgments and against paragraph 4 of the Bremen Fees and Contributions Act with a constitutional complaint. Now the Federal Constitutional Court has to decide.
Does the general public have to pay for public safety?
There are some legally interesting points in the dispute over police costs for high-risk games. In public perception, the main question is whether the state has to finance its own task of “public safety” from tax revenues.
The DFL sees it that way. She therefore considers the Bremen law, with which the organizers can share in the additional costs, to be unconstitutional. Ensuring public safety is seen as being in the general interest. Therefore, it must also be financed from general public funds, i.e. from tax revenues. In addition, football is not responsible for acts of violence that occur outside the stadiums.
The Federal Administrative Court was not convinced by the arguments and so it clearly confirmed the lower court: It is true that ensuring public safety is in the general interest. However, the constitution does not require that all services in the area of core state tasks be financed exclusively through taxes.
The DFL receives clear consideration for the fee. The police ensure that the games run smoothly. This also creates an economic advantage. Many peaceful fans only go to the stadium because the risk of violent acts for them by the police is specifically reduced. So it’s not a question of who is responsible for the acts of violence, but rather who benefits from the police’s extra work.
In the Federal Constitutional Court, too, the main issue will be what limits the constitution sets for such a fee.
Law too vague?
The DFL also complains that the law is too “undefined”. Above all, the amount of the fee cannot be calculated in advance. So you can’t decide whether to cancel the game because of the high costs. In addition, from their point of view, it is a so-called individual case law because it is only tailored to football. And individual laws are prohibited.
In fact, it follows from the Basic Law that the legislature is prohibited from singling out one case from a series of similar situations and making it the subject of a special rule. The wording of the law in Bremen affects all organizers of for-profit events if the other requirements are met, i.e. not explicitly just football and the DFL.
However, they object that only risk games and no other events are affected. In addition, the citizens of Bremen primarily discussed the Bundesliga games when they passed the law.
Do the clubs or the DFL have to pay?
Last but not least, the long dispute was always about whether the DFL was the right person to contact. The DFL says that the home clubs would play the games. If at all, these should be asked to pay.
She will present all of this during the one-day trial in Karlsruhe. The Federal Constitutional Court could announce a judgment in a few months.
2024-04-25 04:45:51
#Constitutional #Court #negotiating #costs #risky #football #games
