THE fiasco over the sale of tickets for next month's football World Cup will be examined in court for the first time today as a group of Euro MPs launches a legal challenge in Paris against the French organisers.
The cross-party group of 31 MEPs believes that the action will be the quickest way of determining whether the French tactics of skewing the sales heavily in favour of domestic supports were illegal because they violated the European Union's non-discriminating laws.
In particular, they want the court - the tribunal de la grande instance - to seek immediate legal advice from the EU's highest legal authority, the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg.
The MEPs want to know whether the organisers' decision to allocate the tickets according to where people lived was unfairly discriminatory, whether the decision to grant such a large number of the tournament sponsors broke EU rules on the freedom to provide services, and whether the high price of the tickets linked to package tours is contrary to EU competition rules.
Liberal Democrat MEP Graham Watson said: ''Since they first indicated we would bring a legal action, the French organisers have speeded up the distribution of the tickets and they have now all gone.
'We cannot call on the French court now to ask for the tournament to be re-organised as that would be a disproportionate response so we want them to refer the case to Luxembourg.''
MEPs believe this will be the quickest way of securing a legal ruling on the arrangements put in place for the tournament, if the French court agrees to refer the questions today. Even so, any decision from the European Court would not emerge until after the end of the tournament.
But if the judges rule that the French have broken EU legislation, the organisers could be liable for a fine of up to #8m - the equivalent of 10% of ticket sales.
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