England slammed for choosing to ignore UEFA with travel plans for Euro 2024

England have caused a stir after choosing to fly in the face of UEFA’s sustainability push for Euro 2024 with their travel plans for the tournament.

Gareth Southgate’s side are staying at the five-star Spa & GolfResort Weimarer Land, in east Germany, for the Euros. While it boasts two full-sized pitches and a golf course on its grounds, the luxury resort is also very remote, which creates problems in planning travel to their three Group C fixtures and for any further knockout matches.

England begin their campaign against Serbia in Gelsenkirchen on Sunday, June 16 before facing Denmark in Frankfurt four days later and concluding the group stages against Slovenia in Cologne on Tuesday, June 25. All three of those cities are in the west of Germany, but England decided to base themselves in the east, with the FA shelling out around £800,000 to base the squad at a resort it hopes will provide the perfect relaxed and secluded environment for the players.

Germany used sustainability as a key factor when bidding to host the tournament and is now billing Euro 2024 as the most sustainable Euros ever. The government has spent £27million on green initiatives which include encouraging the 2.7m fans expected to attend not to drive by discounting train tickets and even reducing parking spaces at stadiums.

UEFA has embraced the idea and its environment, social and governance (ESG) strategy for the tournament states that it will “require team transport [to be by] train or coach in Germany”. Teams had to submit their travel plans to UEFA by February 24, but England’s falls some way short of the stated goals.

England have committed to drive the 282km from their training base to the Denmark game in Frankfurt, with an estimated journey time of just over three hours. But Mirror Football understands they will be flying to Gelsenkirchen and Cologne to play Serbia and Slovenia respectively. The nearest airport to their base is 48km away in Erfurt-Weimar and flying will save them from the 369km coach trip to play Serbia and the 393km journey for the Slovenia match.

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UEFA says that regionalised group games will result in a 75 per cent reduction in flights as compared to Euro 2016. But while UEFA have encouraged teams to spurn flying in favour of taking a more environmentally-friendly low-emission coach or by jumping on a train, they have not made it compulsory.

Their message to teams made it clear that flying was fair game for any journey more than three hours. England’s decision not to choose a training base on UEFA’s official list of options in the west of the country made flying almost inevitable, given the focus on minimising journey time to aid player recovery. The team have stressed that they are in accordance with UEFA’s guidelines.

If the tournament goes to plan for Southgate then there will likely be more flying involved in the knockout stages, given the location of the matches. If the Three Lions top Group C then they will play their last-16 match in Gelsenkirchen, with victory in that match sending them to Dusseldorf for the quarter-finals. A potential semi-final would be in Dortmund, while the final on July 14 will be in Berlin.

All of this is understandable, but remains disappointing for environmental campaigners, who would like elite footballers to set an example. A group of 13 NGOs wrote to Southgate and his fellow Euro 2024 coaches in March to implore them to make a stand against short-haul flights.

They received just two positive responses, with hosts Germany and Switzerland the only sides to confirm that they won’t be flying during the group stages of Euro 2024. That represents a missed opportunity, with research by campaign group Transport & Environment finding that teams could cut their CO2 emissions by nearly 60 per cent just by avoiding flights in the group stages. That figure jumps to a huge 96 per cent for England if they didn’t fly out to Germany and around the country during the group stages.

Travel Smart campaigner Erin Vera said: “UEFA and the hosts Germany have put a lot of effort into cutting transport emissions around the tournament, making it the greenest championships ever. This shows what can be done. Disappointingly the national teams are so far failing to lead by example. If teams choose to avoid taking the plane for journeys that could reasonably be taken by train or coach, they can drastically slash their emissions.”

Mirror Football approached UEFA for comment.

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