By Andrew Warshaw
May 4 – FIFA’s recently established 37-member ruling Council looks set to have its decision making significantly weakened under controversial proposed changes that are only now seeing the light of day.
Just as next week’s FIFA Congress approaches, so it has been revealed that Gianni Infantino and the heads of FIFA’s six confederations who comprise FIFA’s so-called Bureau look set to be given more authority to the detriment of the body that replaced the old scandal-tarnished executive committee.
Documentation accompanying the Congress agenda states that while currently the Bureau “only deal with matters of particular urgency, relevant practice has shown that there are also certain other matters that, while not being of particular urgency, should nevertheless also be dealt with by the Bureau of the Council.”
“Therefore, the competences of the Bureau should be partially expanded to include certain non-urgent matters . . . Furthermore, it is proposed that there no longer be a requirement for the Council to ratify the decisions passed by the Bureau of the Council.”
How that will go down with the Council, many of whose members are either newly installed or are about to be elected and which has yet to meet as a complete body, remains to be seen. Under the new proposal, the bureau can also “prepare the topics” for council meetings.
In another tweak that is certain to raise eyebrows in terms of power concentration, FIFA proposes scrapping the need to have an independent member of its Compensation committee – the body that decides, among other things, the salaries of top officials including Infantino himself.
Instead, in a move that would appear to fly in the face of the principle of reform, it is proposed to replace the independent financial expert on the panel with the chairman of FIFA’s governance committee, Portuguese lawyer Miguel Maduro.
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