UEFA presents its new regulations on financial fairplay to the Culture and Education Committee (CULT) of the European Parliament in Brussels. Statements by William GAILLARD, Adviser to UEFA President, and Andrea TRAVERSO, Head of UEFA Club Licensing.

Brussels

meeting

Committee on Culture and Education

sport and health (T)

Financial Fairplay: extracts from the meeting

SOUNDBITE (French), William GAILLARD, Adviser to UEFA President, The current position is very clear. You have to makepropositions to us and if the leagues and the federations agree, wehave to consider it. That of course also requires amendments at thelevel of European competition, but it really is up to the leagues andtheir federations to come to us, to say that we would like to mergeand set up a multinational league.

SOUNDBITE (French), William GAILLARD, Adviser to UEFA President, When it comes to home-grown players, I would say that wehave measures and a number of leagues have already adopted them, forexample the English league has adopted these measures. It is clearthat financial fairplay is directly linked to that, but thanks tofinancial fairplay there are advantages to investing in training youngplayers and so there are benefits to training rather than buying. Theregulations allow a minimum number of home-grown players plusincentives to training. I think that these together should favourlocal training, but of course we cannot impose those rules, we canmake rules available and it is up to the clubs to decide.

SOUNDBITE (Italian), Andrea TRAVERSO, Head of UEFA Club Licensing, As for investment in infrastructure, such investments arevery large and they can jeopardize clubs financing. If a club investsin a stadium, it will require access to credits, for which they willhave to pay interests and of course to pay back any loans. They haveto take that into account when they calculate their budget. All theclubs have to pay off all infrastructure and these payments can beexcluded

SOUNDBITE (Italian), Andrea TRAVERSO, Head of UEFA Club Licensing, Let me reassure you that we deciding will be the same forall clubs. We set up an independent control committee, it is asupranational committee, it will be trying to bring togetherindependent experts and they are the ones that will carry out theseaudits. They offer a fully independent supervision that will ensurethe uniform application of these regulations and that is an essentialpoint, all clubs have to be treated equally.

SOUNDBITE (Italian), Andrea TRAVERSO, Head of UEFA Club Licensing, The aim of this whole system is to raid in all thesebatting by smaller clubs and to make these smaller clubs moresustainable. This will also lead in the reduction of differencebetween big clubs and small clubs, because there are shareholdersbehind this, they invest and they want to see their investments toyield over the long term.