The Collectif Ultras Paris (CUP) has taken France’s Interior Ministry to the Conseil d’État, three days before kickoff at the Stade Vélodrome in the country’s most heavily policed football fixture.
The group is challenging a ministerial decree published on Thursday that prohibits anyone identifying or behaving as a PSG supporter from traveling between the Paris region and Marseille from midnight to midnight on September 20. A separate order signed on September 9 by the delegated police prefect of Bouches-du-Rhône bars them from the Stade Vélodrome itself and from moving on public roads in the surrounding city center.
“We are asking our lawyer to bring an emergency procedure before the Council of State in order to contest the upcoming ministerial ban,” the CUP said in a statement.
Eleven years without dialogue
Visiting supporters have not been permitted at a PSG-Marseille league fixture since 2015. In its filing, the group said that “eleven years of bans are enough” and that its members would “use all legal means at our disposal to defend our freedom of movement.”
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Much of its frustration was aimed at the prefectural authorities in the Bouches-du-Rhône, who have signed the annual travel bans for the fixture.
“Since 2015, six prefects have succeeded one another, without any real dialogue ever being established,” the CUP said.
Emergency appeals of this kind rarely succeed in France, where visiting supporters are routinely blocked from high-risk fixtures by prefectural order.
Ministry points to 2018 Paris clashes
France’s Interior Ministry has defended the order by citing years of hostility between the two supporter bases, and in particular the February 2018 fixture in Paris. That match was the last Classique to be played with away fans present, and eight law enforcement officers were injured during the incidents around it.
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The two clubs’ ultra groups have been reciprocally shut out of each other’s stadiums for most of the decade since, with the ban applied in both directions whenever the fixture is played.
Kickoff at the Stade Vélodrome is at 8:45pm local time on Sunday, September 20.
