Estonia has lost its right to host the European Fencing Championship over denying visas to athletes from Russia and Belarus<\/p>\n
Estonia has forfeited its right to host the European Fencing Championship this June over its refusal to ensure access to the event for Russian and Belarusian athletes, the country\u2019s fencing federation head has confirmed.
\nTallinn won the right to host the event back in 2024 but faced troubles with the bid late last year after the International Fencing Federation (FIE) greatly simplified the rules for \u2018neutral\u2019 athletes to participate.
\nThe FIE has pressed Estonia to provide written guarantees that it will allow all athletes into the country regardless of their citizenship or military rank, yet Tallinn refused, explicitly stating it would not issue visas to athletes from Russia and Belarus no matter what.
\nThe insistence on barring fencers from the two countries ultimately cost Estonia the right to host the event, Secretary General of the Estonian Fencing Federation (EVL), Aivar Paalberg, confirmed on Friday. The FIE made the decision on January 14 but communicated it to Tallinn only recently, he told the newspaper Ohtuleht. The right to host the championship has been transferred to France, Paalberg added.<\/p>\n
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Speaking to the newspaper late in December, the official explained that the simplified FIE rules only required \u2018neutral\u2019 athletes to \u201csign a declaration that you are against war\u201d with no background checks required.\u00a0
\n\u201cBasically, you can also be a military officer and say that you are against the war \u2013 for a neutral person, that\u2019s enough,\u201d he claimed. At the time, Paalberg said that Estonia had been pressed by international sporting officials, including President of the European Fencing Federation (EFC) Pascal Tesch and Secretary General Jacek Slupski, into accepting the new rules and signing the guarantees.\u00a0
\n\u201cTheir interest was precisely whether the Estonian government would issue such a letter. It\u2019s not organizational at all; it\u2019s political,\u201d he said.\u00a0\u00a0
\nSince the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in February 2022, Russian and Belarusian athletes have been banned from most international competitions, including the Olympics and Paralympics. A number of international sporting bodies over time permitted some to compete individually under neutral flags, while a few organizations dropped the bans altogether.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Estonia has lost its right to host the European Fencing Championship over denying visas to athletes from Russia and Belarus Estonia has forfeited its right to host the European Fencing…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27137,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economy","category-environment","category-politics"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27136"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27136\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/27137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}