Moldova’s Parliament ratified the Council of Europe Convention on an Integrated Safety, Security and Service Approach at Football Matches and other Sports Events, which was opened for signature in Saint-Denis on July 3, 2016, by 88 votes in favor. The bill to ratify the Convention was supplemented with an amendment providing that until Moldova is territorially reunified, the treaty will be applied only on the territory controlled by the constitutional authorities, IPN reports.

This was done because the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe adopted a new Convention given that the previous Convention was 30 years old and a part of its content ran counter to the current European experience. Thus, the reviewed Convention No. 120 of 1985 enables to continue to promote the increasing necessity of creating specialized agencies that would ensure integrated safety and security.

The new Convention incorporates key principles and measures to reduce and efficiently fight safety and security risks at football matches and other sports events. Such risks can appear as a result of natural disasters, terrorist attacks, faults in infrastructure, violence and because of other reasons.

The representative of the Ministry of Sport said in Parliament that after the new Convention is ratified, the Penal Code and the Contravention Code and other legal acts will be modified. Private agencies will have to be created to ensure public order at football matches and other sports events. The goal of the Convention is to guarantee that the sport events are safe for taking part in them.

In this connection, a number of MPs noted that the institutions responsible for public order at sports events cannot intervene in case of altercations at football matches on the left side of the Nistru, which is not controlled by the Moldovan constitutional authorities. Thus, it was proposed introducing an amendment to specify that the Convention will be applied only on the controlled territory until the country is reunified.