Created in 1904 in Paris, the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) will reconnect with its origins. According to information from The Letter A, confirmed at World, the world body, headquartered in Zurich (Switzerland) since 1932, is due to announce Thursday, June 10 the opening, this summer, of a branch at the Hôtel de la Marine, place de la Concorde. Contacted, FIFA did not follow up.
In October 2020, at the end of a meeting organized at the Elysee Palace in the presence of the President of the French Football Federation, Noël Le Graët, the Head of State, Emmanuel Macron, and the FIFA boss, Gianni Infantino, had agreed “On the principle of opening a FIFA branch” in the capital, at the start of 2021.
FIFA wishes to transfer part of its services to Paris, and in particular to organize meetings there with African federations, with regard to questions of governance and football development. She also wants “Consolidate its relations with France and the Francophonie, as well as Unesco and the French Development Agency”.
Discussions took place during this fall between FIFA and the public establishment Business France, mandated for this partial move. According to our information, the Hôtel de la Marine, located near the premises of the International Automobile Federation, had been targeted from the first conversation between MM. Infantino and Macron around this project, in December 2018, in the midst of the “yellow vests” crisis.
Inauguration by Emmanuel Macron
Renovated after four years of work (132 million euros budget) carried by the National Monuments Center (CMN) and partly financed by funds from Qatar, the building built in the 18th centurye century will reopen to the general public on Saturday June 12. Emmanuel Macron is due to inaugurate the building two days earlier.
The Morning company, which markets 6,000 m2 office space at the Hôtel de la Marine, indicates that the companies setting up their workspaces there do not sign a traditional lease with the CMN. It is rather a “Provision of services” provided directly by Morning to hosted companies.
From this autumn the Hôtel de la Marine will host the private collection of the royal family of Qatar, host country of the 2022 FIFA World Cup. Under an agreement between the CMN and the Al Thani Collection Foundation, formalized in October 2018, the collection of Sheikh Hamad Ben Abdullah Al-Thani, “Composed of more than 6,000 works (paintings, jewels) from many civilizations, from Antiquity to the present day”, will be “Presented at the Hôtel de la Marine for a period of twenty years, in the form of temporary exhibitions organized in rotation in a gallery of 400 m² which will be reserved for it”.
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