Analysis. Europe, yes, runs from the Atlantic to the Urals. In the archived speeches of General de Gaulle, but also in today’s stadiums. Until then organized in one, or even two countries at most, the European football championship (the “Euro”) is being played in 2021 on the soil of eleven countries. From Azerbaijan (Baku) or Russia (Saint Petersburg) to Germany (Munich) or Italy (Rome). The final is set for July 11 in London, now outside the European Union (EU).
Political Europe, that of the EU, has 27 member states in Brussels since the withdrawal of the United Kingdom on January 31, 2020. It is already much less than the Council of Europe (47 countries), responsible for human rights in Strasbourg. And it is even less, therefore, than the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA). The latter, registered in the commercial register and established in Nyon (Switzerland), is defined as “Politically neutral”. As powerful as it is independent.
Its playing field is vast: 55 national federations, 24 of which take part in the final phase of the current Euro. The dislocation of the Soviet Union, then that of Yugoslavia, multiplied the distinct entities within the same space. And Israel, first a member of the Asian Confederation and even Asian champion in 1964, but a victim of the boycott of many countries in the Asian zone, became a member of UEFA in 1994.
Breaking free from cold war logic
After the Second World War, the International Football Federation pushed for the creation of continental confederations. UEFA was born in 1954, the same year as its Asian counterpart and three years before that of Africa. The South American Confederation has existed since 1916. Across the European continent, the 1950s coincided with the signing of the Treaty of Rome (1957) creating the European Economic Community (EEC) or with the invention of a telecrochet, Eurovision.
But both Europe, football and politics, first grew on their own. At the political level, European construction has met “A big problem of the adhesion of the people “, Estimates William Gasparini, coordinator of the book Europe of football – sociohistory of a European construction (Strasbourg University Press, 2017). “ It remained an economic and elite affair, there was no democracy in the broad sense yet [premières élections européennes en 1979] “, specifies the sociologist.
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