four supporter trips restored for Ligue 1 and Coupe de France matches this weekend

The ban on the movement of supporters decided for eight football matches scheduled for this weekend in France was lifted for four of them by the Council of State, announced Friday evening the highest administrative court, seized by the National Supporters Association (ANS).

“The Council of State followed our requests. Lensois supporters can go to Montpellier. Reims supporters can go to Nice. Auxerre supporters can go to Troyes. Bordeaux supporters can go to Angoulême”wrote the ANS on its X (and-Twitter) account.

Two Ligue 1 matches and two Coupe de France matches affected

In a decree published Friday in the Official Journal, the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, had banned the travel of football supporters for five matches of the 15th day of Ligue 1 and three matches of the 8th round of the Coupe de France scheduled for this weekend -end. These meetings, believes the minister, present a “real and serious risk of clashes between supporters”in a context “of an exacerbation of the increasingly serious violence observed since the start of the football sports season”.

The National Association of Supporters had contacted the Council of State to have the ministerial and prefectural decrees applicable to four of these matches lifted: Montpellier-Lens (which will kick off this Friday at 9 p.m.) and Nice-Reims ( Sunday 1 p.m.) in Ligue 1, and Angoulême-Bordeaux (Saturday 2 p.m.) and Saint-Méziery-Auxerre (Saturday 5 p.m. in Troyes) for the 8th round of the Coupe de France.

The Council of State, meeting in the afternoon, ruled in favor of him. He explains in his decision that “the banning measures concerning people claiming to be supporters of (these clubs) or behaving as such (…) are disproportionate and therefore constitute a serious and manifestly disproportionate attack on the fundamental freedoms of these people “.