Rebecca Harms, expert on Eastern Europe of the Greens/EFA group in the European Parliament, has initiated an open letter to call on EU governments to stay away from the FIFA World Cup taking place in Russia in June 2018. 60 Members of the European Parliament from 16 different Member States and 5 different political groups (Greens/EFA, EPP, S&D, ALDE and ECR) are supporting the call.
Rebecca Harms comments:
"Vladimir Putin is responsible for the occupation and war in Ukraine. He supports the brutal dictator and torturer Assad. The Russian army is responsible for horrendous war crimes in the war in Syria. President Putin is not a good host for the World Cup, while the war in Syria and Ukraine continues. He is not a friendly host as long as he supports right-wing extremist and anti-democratic parties in the EU, and tries to meddle into elections. Democratic governments should not contribute to Putin’s self-staging as the strong man, whom the great and powerful of the world honour. Nobody should forget that three days after the Winter Olympics in Sochi, the Russian army occupied Crimea. This shows how serious he was four years ago about the Olympic idea of mutual understanding between nations."
The open letter can
be found here.
