AIPS granted observer status on Council of Europe’s Saint-Denis Convention to foster conversations on safety of journalists at sports events
RABAT, May 14, 2025 – The International Sports Press Association (AIPS) has been granted an observer status on the Saint-Denis Convention, a convention on safety and security at sports events, adopted by the Council of Europe (CoE). This was announced on 14 May at the 87th AIPS Congress taking place in Rabat, Morocco.
The observer status is renewable after an initial period of three years, and for AIPS this period starts on 1 March 2025 and will come to an end on 28 February 2028. The Committee of the Saint-Denis Convention made this decision on 17 February 2025.
AN IMPORTANT DISCUSSION In December 2024, AIPS, represented by Vice-President Evelyn Watta, took part in the Sixth meeting of the Committee on Safety and Security at Sports Events, where she highlighted the threats and risks that sports press professionals face inside and outside of sports venues.
“When I attended the meeting last year in Strasbourg, I was actually shocked that we have not been part of this discussion, because a lot of what was discussed is what we are facing daily in our media activities. There was a debrief on Paris 2024 on the safety and security aspect for not only the spectators, but even for us as journalists, something we have been experiencing as journalists. A lot of our photographers and cameramen are always being targeted by spectators, because they’re very close to the field of play. So it is important that we are involved in such discussions at that level, because they also get to hear from us and understand our experiences and how best they can secure us.”
KEY PILLARS Rodrigo Cavaleiro, Chair ad interim of the Saint-Denis Committee, explained how AIPS can support the key pillars of the Saint-Denis Convention: safety, security and service. “Your personal experience and knowledge on the matter is crucial for us. This is groundbreaking for us because we didn’t have this expertise from the media side. We had so many partners, but we missed this side of the story. You go to so many sports events and gather so many experiences. You have your own network of journalists, of photographers and all the professionals involved in media that, of course, you are able to be an important contact point to bring us the lessons learned by these colleagues so that we can try to mitigate the risks and include some of these provisions on the updates that we do on the convention.
Cavaleiro added: “The more you know about these issues, the more capable you are also to provide such information to the public. This is also another important part of the collaboration that we expect to have with AIPS.
Rodrigo Cavaleiro, Chair ad interim of the Saint-Denis Committee (Photo by Carlo Pozzoni/AIPS Media)
THE POWER OF SPORTS At the 87th AIPS Congress, Cavaleiro, who has a police background and is the Portuguese National Authority for the Prevention and Fight Against Sport-Related Violence, explained the origin of the Strasbourg-based Council of Europe (CoE), which was established on 5 May 1949 and currently has 46 member states, including the 27 European Union members. The intergovernmental political organization was founded on three main pillars; human rights, democracy and rule of law.
“The founding fathers of the Council of Europe, in the aftermath of World War II, looked at sports also as a powerful tool to pass values, to build bridges to the people. Like Nelson Mandela once said, sport can change the world. I think we are all aware of that. So besides the large partial agreement on sport that the Council of Europe has, we also have three conventions dedicated to three main areas, to protect sports and to protect the people involved; on match fixing, on anti-doping and the Spectator Violence Convention which started in 1985 as a response to the Heysel disaster.”
HOLISTIC APPROACH The Spectator Violence Convention was then updated to the Saint Denis Convention. “We needed to have a more holistic approach over three main pillars, which are safety, security and service. We have to make sports events more safer, more secure, but also more welcoming for everybody. So it’s not just about applying penalties to the offenders and increasing the cooperation between police authorities. It’s much more than that, and that’s why we also need AIPS. This is a dynamic convention. It’s being updated all the time.”
AIPS is now one of 10 non-state observers of the Saint Denis Convention. UEFA and FIFA also belong to this category.