Euro 2024: why the host nation is required to protect the human rights of football fans

In recent years, several incidents have occurred at major football events where authorities have been heavily criticised by the general public, the media, academics and supporters for breaching the rights of football fans.

The 2022 Champions League Final in Paris is the most high-profile example, where Liverpool fans experienced difficulties travelling to the stadium, encountered crushing as they waited to get in and were subjected to tear gas fired by police.

Following reviews of the incident, initial criticism of supporters was replaced by complaints about the behaviour of police and stadium security, refocusing attention on the human rights of football fans.

Football authorities have since been forced to respond to pressure from advocacy groups such as the Sport and Rights Alliance and Football Supporters Europe. Uefa is the first football federation to include clauses related to human rights as part of its bidding process for Euro 2024, including requirements that potential hosts must “"proactively address human rights risks”.

Uefa, alongside the German Football Association – Deutscher Fussball Bund (DFB) – and the Euro 2024 GmbH (a joint venture of Uefa and DFB) published their human rights declaration for the Euro 2024 tournament in November 2023. In it, Uefa and partners state that: “We all commit to jointly contribute to a tournament that highlights democracy, respect, equity and the promotion and protection of human rights.”

Crucially, the declaration reiterates the responsibility of government and event organisers to respect human rights throughout their tournament. This responsibility means identifying, preventing, and reducing actual or potential negative effects on fans, and reducing the likelihood of abuse. A range of other practical measures have been put in place at Euro 2024 to help uphold and protect human rights at the tournament.

One example is the stated role of the police at the Euros. This aims to ensure public safety and security while maintaining a tolerant, open approach. However, clearly a tension emerges here in that organisers have to balance protecting the rights of supporters with the security and policing concerns of large-scale football events.

Fan zones and protecting rights

Academic research on football fandom and fan cultures has often centred on incidences of violence and hooliganism. Therefore, the need to protect the public from the “threat” of football supporters has typically taken prominence over the need to protect the rights of fans themselves.

Significant media attention on football tournaments can perpetrate negative perceptions associated with football fans. While media stereotyping is commonplace, the nature of policing cultures can reproduce similar shared assumptions about football supporters as drunken, violent and dangerous.

Of course, there have been many incidents of football fans engaging in disorderly behaviour at major football tournaments, including the clash between fans before the opening England Euro 2024 match against Serbia. But there has been an overemphasis on criminalising football fans, leading to police being involved in direct clashes with supporters.

High-profile incidents and the response to them has influenced how football fans are policed, with implications for the spaces designed to host and manage them. Football supporters are considered, paradoxically, both potential criminals and valuable consumers and this has resulted in the creation of dedicated spaces to contain them.

Beyond the extensive security of football stadia, other spaces have been developed by tournament organisers and their host city partners to address the paradoxical representations of football supporters: such as the fan zone. These were first introduced at the 2004 European Championships in Portugal before being popularised at the World Cup 2006 in Germany and have been part of almost every football tournament since.

Uefa, like Fifa, has a contractual requirement to include these “football festivals” in their hosting agreements. Fan zones are secondary venues, welcoming ticketless supporters who can be managed – whether through formal policing, security, or stewarding – to deal with the perceived threat of anti-social behaviour. Promoted as festival settings, they construct and legitimise attempts to control fan behaviour through “soft” measures that restrict mobility and allow for careful monitoring.

Fan zones provide a space for fans to consume food and drink, watch matches and participate in sponsor activities in a safe environment. However, these spaces also embody a dual mission of governing and managing “problematic” fans groups while making money from them. For organisers, fan zones represent a safe way of managing ticketless fans and generating positive media stories for host cities and nations.

They work on the basis of a precautionary logic, building in the management of security and potential risk in festival spaces. At Euro 2024 they are also being used to promote pro-social messages about the importance of fan safety, security, accessibility and inclusion both in their venue design and the United by Football content shared on their big screens.

Record numbers of football fans have made the journey to Germany this summer from the UK, and beyond. Pre-tournament media coverage emphasised the potential threats awaiting fans from terrorism, excessive drinking and breaking German public-order laws.

Our ongoing research into the protection of fans’ human rights at Euro 2024 has shown that fan zones play an important role in managing the mobility of visiting football fans, providing them with safe and secure spaces to enjoy the tournament while also generating revenue for Uefa and its sponsor partners.

However, evidence of crowd congestion, transport chaos and difficulties in accessing basic amenities within the Munich fan zone for the tournament’s opening match suggests that there remains work to be done to ensure the tournament’s lofty rhetoric about protecting the human rights of supporters will be realised.

David McGillivray receives funding from EU Horizon 2020 for a project titled EventRights

Callum McCloskey and Conor Wilson do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.