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Agency Report –
Karlsruhe, Germany – Police can charge German football clubs for the cost of added security measures at “high-risk” matches, Germany’s Constitutional Court ruled on Tuesday in a case brought by the German Football League (DFL).
The German port city of Bremen in 2014 passed a law charging the DFL for the added cost of policing particularly tense Bundesliga matches and other for-profit events with more than 5,000 people that have a known risk of violence.
A football match is considered “high risk” if authorities determine that violent clashes between fan groups are particularly likely.
In 2015, the DFL received the first invoice from Bremen charging €400,000 ($411,000) for deploying extra police to a Bundesliga match between SV Werder Bremen and Hamburger SV.
Further invoices from Bremen for added policing costs have followed in the years since. According to Bremen’s government, the city has charged the DFL a total of €3 million to date.
The league responded by filing the lawsuit, arguing that public safety is a fundamental responsibility of the state and that the invoices were unlawful.
Germany’s top court on Tuesday ruled that Bremen’s local ordinance is compatible with the country’s constitution.
Court President Stephan Harbarth explained in the ruling that aim of the regulation is to shift the costs to the party that has caused the expense and would collect the profits from the event.
The DFL, which runs Germany’s top two professional football leagues, had argued that individual troublemakers – and not the football clubs – were responsible for the security concerns, and that the city of Bremen was not charging fees for a clearly definable service as required by Germany’s constitution.
A lower court in Bremen initially agreed in 2017, ruling that the city was too vague in how it calculated the additional policing costs that were charged to the DFL.
But that ruling was overturned on appeal. Germany’s top administrative court in Leipzig also upheld Bremen’s ordinance as legal.
It remains to be seen whether other German jurisdictions will follow Bremen’s example in the wake of the Constitutional Court’s ruling and begin charging Bundesliga clubs for extra policing costs as well.
Football executives have warned that professional clubs could face considerable financial burdens from such fees, and that inconsistent policies in different parts of Germany would have an impact on the fairness of competition.
By Jacqueline Melcher and Ulrike John
