FIFA president Gianni Infantino is facing fresh pressure after 50 members of the European Parliament asked FIFA on Monday to address an ethics complaint over his decision to award Donald Trump the FIFA Peace Prize in December 2025. The letter puts FIFA’s handling of its own ethics process back in the spotlight, with lawmakers asking whether the prize decision crossed the line on political neutrality.
The letter was sent earlier on Monday to Infantino and members of the FIFA Council, with a copy also going to Mattias Grafstrom and FIFA’s investigatory chamber. Barry Andrews, Lara Wolters and Niels Fuglsang were among the main organizers, and the signatories include members from Republic of Ireland, Germany, Spain, France, Belgium, Italy, Luxembourg, Denmark, Slovakia and the Netherlands.
Lise Klaveness and the neutrality dispute
Lise Klaveness, the president of the Norwegian Football Association, had already criticized Infantino’s decision for being taken without consulting the FIFA Council. She said, “It should also be assessed if it’s a breach of the political neutrality. That will be up to the ethical committee to assess.”
That line sits at the center of the complaint. FairSquare filed the original ethics complaint in December and said Infantino’s public championing of Donald Trump involved repeated breaches of FIFA’s duty of political neutrality under article 15 of the FIFA Code of Ethics. The complaint also asks for an investigation into the process that led to the inaugural FIFA Peace Prize going to Trump.
FIFA Ethics Committee pressure
FIFA says its Ethics Committee is primarily responsible for investigating possible infringements of the FIFA Code of Ethics, and its structure includes investigatory and adjudicatory chambers. The investigatory chamber has representation from Rwanda, China, Canada, Malaysia, Greece, Kenya, Argentina, Vanuatu and Panama, while the nine-person committee is chaired by Martin Ngoga.
That setup matters because the complaint is not just about one prize decision. It is now a test of whether FIFA’s internal ethics machinery will treat political neutrality as a live issue when the criticism reaches the top of the organization, and whether the letter from 50 lawmakers across 10 countries pushes the case any further inside FIFA.
FIFA Council faces the next move
The immediate pressure now sits with FIFA’s leadership and ethics bodies, not the European Parliament members who signed the letter. The complaint is already filed, the political support behind it is public, and the challenge is whether FIFA’s own process moves from complaint to action.
