Norwegian Football Association president Lise Klaveness has asked FIFA to abolish the FIFA Peace Prize, The Athletic reported on Monday.
U.S. President Trump and FIFA President Gianni Infantino. (Photo courtesy of FIFA)
Norwegian Football Association president Lise Klaveness has asked FIFA to abolish the FIFA Peace Prize, The Athletic reported on Monday.
The first FIFA Peace Prize was awarded by FIFA President Gianni Infantino to U.S. President Donald Trump at the World Cup draw in Washington, D.C. on Dec. 5. The prize was announced without any approval by the FIFA Council.
Klaveness, who will attend the FIFA Congress in Vancouver on Thursday, April 30. said that she supports an ethics complaint against Infantino.
She added that FIFA is supposed to remain politically neutral.
“We want to see [it] abolished,” Klaveness said in a roundtable with international media on Monday. “We don’t think it’s part of FIFA’s mandate to give such a prize. We think we have a Nobel institute that does that job independently already.
“We think it’s important for football federations, confederations and FIFA to try and avoid situations where this arm’s length distance to state leaders are challenged. These prizes will typically be very political if you don’t have really good instruments and experience to make this independent.
“To have a jury and criteria is full-time work. It’s so sensitive. From a resource angle and from a mandate angle but, most importantly, from a governance angle, I think it should be avoided also in the future.”