World football supremo Joseph Blatter said Tuesday that the FIFA Congress will consider political and human rights situations within bidding countries before awarding future World Cups.
“The Congress will be called in to award the World Cup in the future and I will make sure that the Congress can also look at the social, cultural, let’s say the human rights situation,” the 78-year-old Mr. Blatter said in an interview with the German Press Agency dpa.
Any changes in consideration of future World Cup hosts will not impact Russia from hosting the 2018 World Cup and Qatar in 2022.
“We cannot change anything regarding the World Cup planning. We will play out 2014. We don’t have any problem at the moment with 2018 in Russia and the problems with Qatar are known,” Mr. Blatter said.
The next World Cup to be awarded is the 2026 tournament in five years.
The awarding process was changed after criticism of the decision to name the 2018 and 2022 World Cup hosts at the same time. The FIFA Executive Committee with its some two dozen members had previously handed out the World Cup. But now it will be done by the Congress with all 209 FIFA members having a vote.
