{"id":21743,"date":"2025-10-29T17:38:42","date_gmt":"2025-10-29T17:38:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/laura-villars-starts-legal-action-against-fia-over-election-for-president\/"},"modified":"2025-10-29T17:38:42","modified_gmt":"2025-10-29T17:38:42","slug":"laura-villars-starts-legal-action-against-fia-over-election-for-president","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/laura-villars-starts-legal-action-against-fia-over-election-for-president\/","title":{"rendered":"Laura Villars starts legal action against FIA over election for president"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Villars told BBC Sport: &#8220;This procedure aims to ensure that the FIA&#8217;s upcoming presidential election, currently set for 12 December 2025, complies with the organisation&#8217;s own statutes and with fundamental democratic principles.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;The legal action is grounded on Article 1.3 of the FIA statutes, which commits the FIA to &#8216;respect the highest standards of governance, transparency and democracy&#8217;, and on the fact that the FIA is a French-law association headquartered in Paris, thus subject to French jurisdiction.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;This step is neither hostile nor political &#8211; it is a responsible and constructive initiative to safeguard transparency, ethics and pluralism within global motorsport governance.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;As I have stated publicly, I am not acting against the FIA. I am acting to protect it. Democracy is not a threat to the FIA; it is its strength.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">An FIA spokesperson told BBC Sport: &#8220;Due to the nature of the process, the FIA is unable to comment on this legal action and will not be able to provide further comment on this matter.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Villars said the court had invited both parties to a mediation meeting and that she would attend it &#8220;in a spirit of openness and good faith&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I will go to this mediation hearing with the same attitude I have maintained from the beginning &#8211; calm, openness, and determination,&#8221; she said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I hope it will finally lead to a sincere dialogue in the service of a FIA that is more modern, fair, and connected to its members.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I have twice tried to open a constructive dialogue with the FIA on essential matters such as internal democracy and the transparency of electoral rules. The responses received were not up to the challenge.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Villars&#8217; barrister, Robin Binsard, said: &#8220;We have obtained authorisation for an hour-to-hour emergency summons, which demonstrates that the court is taking seriously the serious democratic failings within the FIA, as well as several violations of its statutes and regulations that we have denounced.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/formula1\/articles\/c04grkxke09o?at_medium=RSS&#038;at_campaign=rss\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Villars told BBC Sport: &#8220;This procedure aims to ensure that the FIA&#8217;s upcoming presidential election, currently set for 12 December 2025, complies with the organisation&#8217;s own statutes and with fundamental democratic principles. &#8220;The legal action is grounded on Article 1.3 of the FIA statutes, which commits the FIA to &#8216;respect the highest standards of governance, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21744,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-formula1"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21743"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21743\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21745,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21743\/revisions\/21745"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}