“Sustainability is considered every step of the way”

The European Football Championships start in Germany on 14 June 2024. The German Football Association (DFB) and the European Football Union (UEFA) are looking to set new standards in the area of sustainability. The Managing Director of EURO 2024 GmbH, which was founded by the DFB and UEFA, talks about rail travel for the Euros, a sustainable match schedule and potential lessons for future major events. 

Mr Schär, what is the sustainability concept for Euro 2024?
The UEFA EURO 2024 is set to be the greenest European Championship to date, with sustainability explicitly included in the competition rules for the first time. We also defined a strategy at an early stage that covers the areas of environment, social affairs and governance. An action plan based on this is now being implemented. There are a number of site factors we can benefit from here: there’s no need to build any new stadiums, for example, and Germany has a dense, modern rail network. But we’ve also introduced innovations such as the sustainable design of the programme with short travel distances. 

How will the action plan be implemented in practice?
One key point is climate responsibility and the related issue of mobility. We want as many people as possible to travel by train, so the 2.8 million tickets include 36 hours’ use of local public transport. In addition, discounted tickets for long-distance trains enable cheap and climate-friendly travel. And an optimised match schedule means that travel distances for the 24 teams will be kept to a minimum. Particularly noteworthy in the area of social sustainability is the human rights declaration adopted jointly with the DFB and the German federal government in November 2023, along with a commitment to the Supply Chain Act. 

How can Germany be a role model for future large-scale events?
For EURO 2024, UEFA is making enormous efforts in the area of sustainability and taking the issue into account every step of the way. In addition, a comprehensive ex-post assessment is planned for the tournament based on the ex-ante climate study provided by the Öko-Institut on behalf of the Federal Ministry for the Environment. Such comprehensive, publicly accessible data is a first for a large-scale sporting event and will be very useful when it comes to organising other events in the future. In terms of emissions that are unavoidable even given the planned carbon reduction measures – some of which have already been implemented – UEFA has planned, created and implemented its own future-oriented solution involving a climate fund. Seven million euros will be made available for environmental projects to benefit the German football family.