December 16 – The Basque Football Federation has applied to FIFA and UEFA to be officially recognised so the regional team can compete in international competition.
A delegation travelled to FIFA’s headquarters in Zurich and UEFA’s base in Nyon on Tuesday to register the application for full membership.
A statement on the Basque federation website said it was making the application on behalf of its members following a vote in a 2018 general assembly and that the request represented “the majority desire of Basque society”.
Federation lawyer David Salinas-Armendariz said joining UEFA and FIFA was “a legitimate and absolutely viable objective from a legal point of view” adding that European territories that were not independent states had been recognised by the two organisations before.
Gibraltar, a British overseas territory, was accepted by UEFA in 2013 and by FIFA in 2016 but only after a long legal fight for recognition
The Basque country is one of Spain’s 17 autonomous communities but enjoys a number of privileges, including fiscal autonomy. Its football team, known as Euskadi, was founded in 1915 and plays friendly matches but has never played in an official competition.
The team’s last match was a 2-1 win over Costa Rica in November but inclusion in FIFA and UEFA seems unlikely.
The current statutes of UEFA state in article 5.1 that “being a member of UEFA is open to national football associations located on the European continent, established in a country that is recognized as an independent state by the majority of UN members and who is responsible for the organization and implementation of football-related matters in the territory of his country.”
The article was modified in 2001 to avoid the likes of Gibraltar which, like Euskadi, is not an independent state recognized by the UN. But Gibraltar won its case when it turned to the Court of Arbitration for Sport which agreed it had submitted its initial request before Uefa’s change of statutes.
In addition, Gibraltar has its own league independent of any British federation, a different scenario from the Basque Country, whose clubs and competitions are under the direct control of the Spanish Football Federation.
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