Ruling on a case brought by the German Football League (DFL) against Bremen police, the federal administrative court in Leipzig found that it was legitimate to charge a fee "for special police deployment at high-risk events of a commercial nature".
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The court did not rule however on the specific case of Bremen. Rather, it sent the affair back to a local court in the northern German city.
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Bremen authorities welcomed the ruling, with the official in charge of interior affairs, Ulrich Maeurer, calling it a "historic decision".Â
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"It's about the fundamental question, can we get the DFL to partly pay for police deployment? And the answer is clearly yes," he said.
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The league's president Reinhard Rauball voiced his disappointment, saying the ruling was "certainly not what we expected".
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The league had filed the lawsuit against Bremen police after they sent a bill to the DFL for a massive deployment during a derby match between Werder Bremen and Hamburg in April 2015.
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