FIFA must continue reform, says IGC report
The FIFA Independent Governance Committee (IGC), led by Swiss professor Mark Pieth, has concluded its advisory review of the governance in football’s world governing body, FIFA, and the results are now available in a final report.
According to the report, the IGC finds the FIFA reform process to have successfully started and that ‘important milestones’ have been reached, such as the division of the ethical commission into an investigatory and an adjudicatory chamber.
However, there are still issues that FIFA needs to address in order to carry through a successful governance reform within the organisation, the report states and pinpoints seven ‘outstanding recommendations’. Among these recommendations are integrity reviews of all members of the ex-co, the introduction of term limits, and transparency in the area of Compensations and Benefits.
Three basic areas are highlighted as potential risks and challenges for the continuation of the reform process: 1) effective implementation of reform steps, 2) decisions on IGC proposals and 3) overall sustainability of reform as well as cultural change.
The report further stresses the need to address allegations regarding the 2018 and 2022 World Cup hosting decisions currently under investigation by Michael Garcia, chair of the investigatory branch of the FIFA Ethics Committee.
"If FIFA is to emerge from the scandals of recent years, it must now produce a convincing and transparent answer to any issues relating to hosting decisions, either to confirm that the suspicions are, sadly, well founded or demonstrate that they are groundless," the report says.
Download the Final report by the Independent Governance Committee to the Executive Committee of FIFA