During the fever World Cup in football the leadership of Fifa found itself under new pressure due to a special peace award given by the president of the umbrella football association Gianni Infantino at the end of 2025, awarded to the US president for the first time Donald Trump.
According to a French newspaper Le Monde on Monday, about fifty European parliamentarians addressed a letter to the President of FIFA, the General Secretary and the FIFA Ethics Commission, in which they demand a quick and transparent investigation into the circumstances of the award. The initiative is to be led by an Irish MP Barry Andrewsa Dutch woman Lara Wolters and a Dane Niels Fuglsang.
Trump received the first FIFA Peace Prize on 5 December 2025 in Washington, DC, on the sidelines of the group draw for the 2026 World Cup. At the time, Infantino based the decision on Trump’s efforts for peace, and Fifa announced that it would award the prize annually.
But the decision quickly raised questions about Fifa’s commitment to political neutrality and how the project was prepared in the first place. Le Monde reports that less than ten Fifa employees are said to have been involved in the preparation of the award, and that the wider management or the Fifa Council was not even informed about it before the award.
The big question is whether the peace prize will be awarded at all in the future. Last year was a response to Trump’s failed bid for the Nobel Peace Prize. Photo by Amber Searls/Reuters
MEPs are therefore demanding clarifications from the ethics commission on Infantino’s role, project financing and decision-making procedures. They warn that lack of transparency in such decisions could damage Fifa’s reputation, especially at a time when the World Cup is in full swing in the US, Canada and Mexico.
The controversy is also linked to a previous complaint by the British non-governmental organization FairSquare, which reported Infantino to FIFA’s Ethics Commission for allegedly violating the principle of political neutrality. Similar concerns were expressed by the Norwegian Football Association.
FIFA has not yet responded in detail to the new demands of European parliamentarians. In recent days, Infantino has confirmed that Trump will also participate in the awarding of the trophy to the winner of the World Cup, which further intensified the debate about the relationship between the FIFA president and the American president. In the last year, Infantino has visited Trump more times than any European head of state.
