Proposition 53K2037

Projet de loi modifiant le Code pénal en vue d'instaurant une circonstance aggravante pour les infractions commises à l'encontre des arbitres de manifestations sportives.

General information ¶

Authors

CD&V Jef Van den Bergh
PS | SP Laurent Devin, Anthony Dufrane, André Frédéric, Rachid Madrane, Éric Thiébaut
Vooruit Peter Vanvelthoven

Submission date

Feb. 6, 2012

Official page

Visit

Status

Adopted

Requirement

Simple

Subjects

violence sport criminal law penalty aggravating circumstances

Voting ¶

Voted to adopt

Groen CD&V Vooruit Ecolo LE PS | SP ∉ Open Vld N-VA LDD MR VB

Contact form ¶

Do you have a question or request regarding this proposition? Select the most appropriate option for your request and I will get back to you shortly.

Discussion ¶

June 7, 2012 | Plenary session (Chamber of representatives)

Full source

Mr. Speaker, the proposed legislation aims to introduce an aggravating circumstance for perpetrators of certain crimes against arbitrators of sports competitions.

We found that there is increasing violence committed against arbitrators and sports counselors. These persons are always voluntary and it is necessary that they are respected in order to continue the sport in a proper manner.

Therefore, better criminal protection is necessary. In particular, we would like to double the minimum punishment for offences referred to in Articles 398 to 405 of the Criminal Code. In case of imprisonment, we would like to extend the term by two years.

The draft law of Mr. Devin was linked to a draft law of Mr. Brotcorne.

During the discussion, Mr Denis Ducarme submitted an amendment aiming to extend the bill to arbitrators of all sports matches and therefore not only of football matches. The amendment was unanimously adopted.

The whole was unanimously adopted.

I now speak on behalf of my party. The N-VA will support these bills. However, we make a little reservation for the future. Article 410a provides a long list of categories that are protected. If such matters continue to occur in the future, this is not the appropriate way to carry out legislative work. We need to pay attention to this in the future. In addition, the present proposals are valuable.

First of all, I would like to thank my fellow rapporteur for summarizing our comments.

Sport is a formidable tool of social cohesion capable of conveying essential moral values such as respect for others, self-excellence, solidarity, tolerance, without forgetting fair play. It can also have educational virtues for the younger and, most importantly, its health benefits are no longer to be demonstrated. It is therefore undeniable that sports events are very positive for society as a whole.

However, some sports events have a “sufficiently high” bet so that some people forget Pierre de Coubertin’s saying: “The important thing is not to win but to participate.”

Although the legislator intervened in 1998 in the middle of football to try to channel these complex and criminal social phenomena, we find that another form of reproachable behavior has settled during sports events, the violence exercised against the arbitral body.

This phenomenon is all the more disturbing and unacceptable as it tends to grow and generalize throughout the sporting environment and in the lower divisions, even at the amateur level or at meetings involving children sometimes very young. It is inadmissible for persons to blame the arbitral body when the arbitral body makes sporting decisions, under the pretext that these decisions do not suit them or that they consider them unfair.

Nevertheless, let us not forget that arbitrators are often volunteer persons, dedicating a great deal of time and energy to the exercise of their functions and whose practice constitutes for them a passion. In addition, they are essential for the proper running of sports meetings and therefore deserve to be respected. Without a judge, no meeting.

Therefore, in order to better criminally protect arbitrators from violent deviations that they may be victims of in the exercise of their duties at sporting events, both at the professional and amateur level, the proposed law proposes to amend the Criminal Code in order to punish more severely those who would be guilty of assaults against an arbitrator. It provides for multiplying by 1.5 the minimum penalty provided by Articles 398 to 405 of the Criminal Code and increasing the imprisonment by one year. The proposed principle can be compared to what is done to protect nurses, pharmacists, doctors and train escorts.

Mr. Speaker, dear colleagues, this proposal is the first of a series of proposals aimed at improving the safety and user-friendliness of sporting events, whether in football or in any other sport organized by recognized sports federations in our country. I hope that, as in the committee, you will support him.

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Minister, dear colleagues, I do not know if this is the proximity of the Euro 2012, but I must confide you that, in the last few weeks, the Interior Committee has taken some kind of football in the hall. We talked about football; we talked about sport, and above all, we talked about arbitration. In fact, it was worth looking at a text aimed at securing what constitutes one of the schools of life, namely sport.

You know how much the Reform Movement, through all its programs, attaches importance to sport.

For the school of life, for fair play, for the learning of the social bond, for the life of our communes, we should not take this text lightly and bring, beyond these important elements in terms of values for our young and the younger, security.

It was also necessary to approach the issue of sport in general, football in particular, from the point of view of security, and to give the referees the opportunity to be able to officer in all serenity. It is clear – we have talked about this with a number of representatives of the associative and sports circles – that it becomes increasingly difficult to bring in tournaments, football matches, etc., arbitrators because this requires time, energy, not to forget that there is sometimes a climate of insecurity.

That is why we wanted to fully contribute to the proposal and debate on an aggravation of the punishment related to violence committed against arbitrators.

Sometimes the discussions have been quite intense. On this occasion, it even happened to you, Mr. Devin, to "play the man". In the end, however, it can be said that a form of unanimousness has emerged.

In our opinion, if your basic text was well-intentioned, well-built, it lacked, however, an important nuance.

On behalf of the Reform Movement, I call on all political groups, beyond the attention they may have for certain professional categories, to remain careful not to provide any form of additional protection to these professional categories.

Mr. Speaker, you are familiar with Article 410bis of the Criminal Code; you are familiar with all the categories that are protected according to tasks of public interest or health; you are also familiar with Article 237 of the Criminal Code regarding the special attention and protection that we give to the depository officers of the public authority. Today, we are interested in arbitrators, but we could not put them on the same foot as a doctor, a social worker, or even a police officer. What do we do when we need to solve this kind of problem? Ask the man to go into the game. The MR got into the game, he shook the crampons and made a proposal that put everyone in agreement. This proposal prevented this text from being sent back to the dressing room and may have allowed unanimous agreement on the issue. We agreed on the amendment that was proposed by my care, by the Reform Movement, and fully supported in a vivid team spirit. This amendment no longer puts the special protection conferred on arbitrators on the same footing as that conferred on arbitrators.

Can there be an anti-doping control?

Mr. Mayeur, if it is not you who holds the needle, I have no problem!

I would like to ask for a correction in the arbitration process.

This is for the report...

I think the text makes an important distinction. The aggravation associated with the penalty concerning violence against arbitrators could not, as I pointed out, be as significant as for the categories referred to in Article 410bis concerning officials of public authority.

With this text, we were able to meet a requirement. And we will see in the future whether this particular attention, which focuses on the organization of the sport and the preservation of the role of the organizing arbitrators in the strict sense of our sport practices in our cities and villages, will enable them to operate in total tranquility with more serenity, conscious of the interest that the political powers attribute to them and the support that we give them.

Applause in the tribunes!

Mr. Speaker, unlike our colleague Ducarme, I do not have the impression that we played the man in commission. On the contrary, I had the feeling that the fair-play that was advocated had the right of citation and that as a result of the agreement of all the political groups, one was able to elaborate a text taking into account the opinions of one and the other in the most perfect serenity, without having to resort to any other doping.

I simply wanted to recall that I had already had the pleasure of submitting, long before, on my own behalf and on behalf of my group, a bill going exactly in the same direction, but which had the unlucky chance to be inscribed – while it was right there it found its place – in the Justice Committee, since the Criminal Code was amended.

Packed, the football specialists in the Interior Committee wanted to progress and put this proposal on the agenda, forgetting the previous one. He was reminded. It was discussed and discussed in the committee. The fair play was there. It was a pity that this was not the case, because this is the goal we are pursuing.

We all know that sports events as a whole are, first of all, a formidable tool for social cohesion. This is a way to promote your health.

It is also a way of showing her ability to carry values of self-excellence, fair play, listening to others, as well as competition, but a competition allied with tolerance: she will not satisfy herself with a struggle to defeat the other even by crushing it, but will seek a healthy emulation. These are so many positive aspects for society in general and solidarity within this society.

It was unacceptable to witness this increase in the number of overflowing around our sports fields, at any level, amateur as well as professional, of unfortunate overflowing often at the expense of the iconic figure of the authority during a competition, which makes itself vilipender and blame some of its decisions, chahuter, often insult and sometimes harass or take part.

All this is intolerable for physical integrity, of course, but even more for the example to be addressed to sports practitioners, especially young people, because it goes against the values I mentioned earlier.

It was therefore normal and well-timed that we demonstrated the will of this parliament to punish with severity this type of behavior, hoping not that many will be punished, but that the cream of these heightened sanctions can help to ban them.

This is the goal that has been the basis for the preparation of these texts. This is also the concern in which these texts were deposited, then voted by the whole committee and will be today by the whole of this parliament.