(ANSA) - Italy clamped down tighter on soccer hooliganism Wednesday with a new law that turns up the heat on troublemakers.
The law stiffens punishments for those found guilty of causing crowd trouble, forces known thugs to report to police stations on match days, lengthens bans on violent supporters for up to two years and, for the first time, extends these and other existing measures to international games.
The MP who filed the bill, Gabriele Boscetto of Premier Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia party, said extending bans to foreign stadiums would "put an end to hooligan tourism" in which violent fans break domestic shackles to vent their fury in organised packs abroad.
The law - which also raises fines for ticket touts - comes in the wake of a string of similar clampdowns. The last was in August when an emergency decree raised penalties and introduced measures that have proved successful abroad. Many of the decree's measures have been incorporated into the law passed on Wednesday.
People who throw objects onto the pitch or take part in pitch invasions that cause a game to be delayed or suspended may now find themselves spending as much as four and a half years behind bars. Police powers to stop past offenders going to football
matches have been beefed up. The law also bolsters the role of club stewards, which the authorities are trying to encourage at Italy's stadiums, so that fans police themselves more. This is part of the model that curbed hooliganism in England in the 1980s.
While on duty at the ground, Italian stewards will enjoy the status of 'public officials'. This means an act of violence against them will be treated as if it had been carried out against a police officer or a fire-fighter, for example.
Soccer officials hailed Wednesday's law. "I'm convinced the new measures, added to the existing package, will help ensure matches can take place in a civilised climate," said Italian Soccer Federation (FIGC) Chief Franco Carraro.
Some opposition MPs criticised the law as an "unacceptable" curb on civil liberties. August's decree was approved by the cabinet only two months after it passed another hooliganism package. This increased the use of video surveillance inside
grounds and introduced numbered tickets with the buyers' name on to make it easier to detect hooligans.
The earlier package also strengthened the police's powers to suspend games if there is a threat to public order. The new rules come after a wretched season, in which three Serie A clubs, AS Roma, Lazio and Inter, were handed European competition stadium bans because of the conduct of their supporters.
The Interior Ministry and the FIGC agreed to adopt a zero-tolerance policy towards hooliganism in April after crowd trouble forced refs to halt the Champions League quarter-final Derby between Inter Milan and AC Milan. That incident - in which flares rained onto the pitch, felling Milan keeper Dida - came on the back of a string of disturbing episodes in Serie A.
As a result, Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu instructed police chiefs to call off matches if there is violence before or during a game, even if this takes place outside the stadium. FIGC, meanwhile, gave referees instructions to suspend matches if fans hurl flares or other dangerous missiles. Teams whose fans are responsible for trouble causing a match to be abandoned automatically lose the game 3-0. If the trouble involves both sets of fans, it's possible for two teams to lose the same encounter 3-0.
The end of last season passed off relatively peacefully.
