The frontal attack on the International Olympic Committee takes place in point 23 of the resolution of the European Parliament. In it, the EU Parliament condemned the plans of IOC President Thomas Bach to allow Russian and Belarusian athletes to compete in the 2024 Olympics. And further: “The EU Parliament calls on the member states and the international community to put pressure on the IOC to reverse this decision, which is shameful for the international sports world.”
The EU Parliament is ashamed across factions for a plan by what is perhaps the most important sports organization in the world. In a resolution in which Russia and Belarus, in particular, are again condemned in the strongest possible terms one year after the invasion of Ukraine.
Von Cramon: No discussions in the EU Parliament
“And that wasn’t even remotely disputed among colleagues. That was waved through, nobody even made a single amendment,” says Viola von Cramon from the Greens group in the European Parliament, who helped prepare the relevant resolution.
As long as the war is going on, for the Austrian Social Democrat Hannes Heide it is “definitely the wrong time to talk about whether athletes from Belarus and the Russian Federation will take part in 2024.”
In its position, the IOC refers to two special rapporteurs from the UN Human Rights Council, who say that a blanket exclusion of Russia and Belarus violates human rights. EU politician Heide therefore also suspects a calculation behind the IOC considerations: “I assume that Thomas Bach is not as naive as he acts. I can’t imagine anyone consciously wanting to trigger these conflicts. Or want.”
Exclusion of Russia and Belarus’ legally problematic
But it is also clear that the collective exclusion of the two countries is legally problematic in any case. Sanctions expert Viktor Winkler, for example, said on Deutschlandfunk “that discrimination is always illegal. And it doesn’t matter whether the good guys or the bad guys discriminate. That the exclusions based on nationality are all clear and serious breaches of the law.”
“In the case of South Africa, we saw that there has been discrimination, if you want to call it that, against South African athletes for decades. On the other hand, no one protested because everyone knew that the apartheid regime had to fall before international sport could open up to this country. I don’t see any difference now,” says Green Party politician Viola von Cramon. In her opinion, the measures against Russia should go even further: “It’s time not only to finally think about throwing out Russian officials, but also to implement them. It could have been enforced long ago that they only have another chance and can apply once the war is over.”
Pressure on the sponsors is growing
Pressure on the IOC is also growing from other quarters. The global athletes’ representation Global Athlete has repeatedly appealed to the IOC to continue to suspend Russian and Belarusian athletes. Now their boss Rob Koehler puts the IOC directly in line with the regimes in Minsk and Moscow: “We call on the international sponsors to put pressure on the IOC to exclude Belarus and Russia from the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris.”
Sponsors such as the tire manufacturer Bridgestone or AirBnB have shut down their business in Russia, but support the IOC’s course with their money: “It completely contradicts their business line. If they go out of business in Russia and Belarus because of the war, then they certainly cannot support the Olympic Games, where Russia and Belarus are participating.”
The hope behind the action: At the latest when sponsors withdraw, the IOC will be made to think.
Von Cramon hopes for an international alliance
The Green MEP Viola von Cramon also relies on a broad international alliance that at least threatens to boycott Paris 2024. “That there are countries that will not take part in the Games if there are Russian athletes participating under a neutral flag.”
“Should they be allowed under whatever circumstances, we will come into a kind of counter-movement that many associations will announce that they will not send their athletes to these events,” believes Social Democrat Heide. “And that’s what the IOC , but also other sports associations have to be taken into account. The President of the IOC has a responsibility to prevent that.”