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German football clubs face possible security bill at high-risk games

AFP
AFP - [email protected]
German football clubs face possible security bill at high-risk games
Photo: Carmen Jaspersen/DPA

Bundesliga football clubs can be requested to pay for police deployments at high-risk matches, a German court ruled on Friday, to the dismay of the league.

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Ruling on a case brought by the German Football League (DFL) against Bremen police, the federal administrative court in Leipzig found that it was legitimate to charge a fee "for special police deployment at high-risk events of a commercial nature".
 
The court did not rule however on the specific case of Bremen. Rather, it sent the affair back to a local court in the northern German city.
 
Bremen authorities welcomed the ruling, with the official in charge of interior affairs, Ulrich Maeurer, calling it a "historic decision". 
 
"It's about the fundamental question, can we get the DFL to partly pay for police deployment? And the answer is clearly yes," he said.
 
The league's president Reinhard Rauball voiced his disappointment, saying the ruling was "certainly not what we expected".
 
The league had filed the lawsuit against Bremen police after they sent a bill to the DFL for a massive deployment during a derby match between Werder Bremen and Hamburg in April 2015.

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