The Europe’s players’ union is set to be included with voting right on UEFA’s all-powerful executive committee on Feb. 12 during the European governing body’s annual congress on Feb. 12.
The move to give FIFPRO Europe voting rights comes more than two years after UEFA pledged to do so.
FIFPRO Europe, which is made up of national unions including the Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA), will now be represented on the ExCo by FIFPRO Europe president David Terrier.
The closer cooperation with European football’s governing body, which was formally ratified at UEFA’s annual Congress in Brussels on Thursday, is in contrast to its strained relations with FIFA.
FIFPRO Europe is involved in an action against global football’s governing body through the Belgian courts and has also made a complaint to the European Commission alongside the European Leagues group.
In both cases, at the heart of FIFPRO’s discontent is what it sees as a failure by FIFA to consult over the international calendar.
Terrier said: “For the first time, players are formally represented at the highest level of decision-making in European football. It also recognises that players are a core stakeholder in the game and that decisions affecting their work, health, and careers must be taken with their legitimate representatives not only present but actively involved.
“This step ensures that players are no longer outside the room. Their position is now part of a formal process: it is recorded, debated and integrated into governance. That is where real change begins.”
Asked to compare this new agreement with what was happening at global level, Terrier said: “Elsewhere, we continue to see unilateral decision-making and attempts to sideline legitimate player representation, such as engaging with bodies that don’t genuinely represent players.
“That approach is increasingly challenged, not only politically but legally as well. In Europe, football stakeholders are demonstrating that collaborative governance is feasible and delivers tangible results.”
FIFA has repeatedly criticised FIFPRO over recent months. In July last year it accused FIFPRO’s leadership of adopting an “increasingly divisive and contradictory tone” and said the organisation had “chosen to pursue a path of public confrontation driven by artificial PR battles — which have nothing to do with protecting the welfare of professional players but rather aim to preserve their own personal positions and interests.”
Information from PA was used in this report.
