The future of the FIFA Peace Prize that was awarded to U.S. President Donald Trump last year is in doubt after the FIFA Council enlisted a committee to reassess it.
At a meeting in Zurich Thursday, the council tasked the FIFA Football Social Responsibility Committee with determining whether the prize will be awarded in the future and, if so, whether the award’s criteria will be adjusted. The 23-member committee is chaired by Myanmar Football Federation president Zaw Zaw, whose deputy is former Argentina and Inter Milan defender Javier Zanetti.
FIFA created the Peace Prize last November to honor “individuals who, through their unwavering commitment and their special actions, have helped to unite people all over the world in peace,” it said in its announcement.
FIFA President Gianni Infantino awarded Trump the prize at the World Cup draw in D.C. in December, and Trump called it “truly one of the great honors of my life.”
Less than three months later, the U.S. and Israel launched joint strikes on Iran, which has resulted in a broader regional conflict.
“President Trump’s Peace through Strength foreign policy is a tried-and-true approach that keeps America safe and deters global threats that has already ended eight wars in less than a year,” White House spokesperson Davis Ingle told Front Office Sports. “There is no one else in the world more deserving of FIFA’s first ever Peace Prize than President Trump.”
FIFA awarding the Peace Prize to Trump sparked backlash among some national federations. In June, Norway Football Federation president Lise Klaveness said the federation had written a letter to FIFA supporting a formal complaint against the governing body over the Peace Prize.
Coming out of Thursday’s meeting, FIFA Council member and president of the English Football Association Debbie Hewitt told assembled media that the social responsibility committee will consider “whether there should have been [a prize], how the decision was taken to award it, and whether there should be another one.”
Thursday’s council meeting also featured discussion of Infantino’s ill-fated FIFA Forward Enterprise (FFE) plan to create a commercial subsidiary of the World Cup and sell shares of it to private investors.
Infantino apologized for “the mistakes that we made in relation to the communication and consultation process related to the FIFA Forward Enterprise Project,” he told reporters. He also told council members to submit questions in writing that he would answer at the next meeting in December.
The fallout from Infantino’s FFE plan has complicated his re-election bid for a fourth and final term in March. UEFA President Aleksander Čeferin has called for Infantino to step down and several other federation presidents have expressed a lack of confidence in his leadership, but Infantino is currently running unopposed.
After the meeting, German Football Association president Bernd Neuendorf said Infantino’s apology did little to sway his view of the FIFA president.
“We asked a great many critical questions, but in my view, there were no satisfactory answers,” Neuendorf said.
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