The President of the European Football Association (UEFA), Aleksander Ceferin, criticized political correctness in the Western world and said that freedom of speech no longer exists, dpa agency reports.
In an interview with the Delo newspaper in his native Slovenia, Ceferin expressed concerns about the future of Europe.
"We are all tired of political correctness. Here in the Western world, freedom of speech no longer exists. You can no longer say what you think. On the one hand, there are right-wing populists who have simple rhetoric - migrants are taking away your jobs and engaging in crime, LGBT propaganda will wipe out families, they will destroy your children, etc. This is such simplistic populist rhetoric that anyone can understand it," Aleksander Ceferin said.
"On the other hand, almost all Western politics appeals to people of an intellectual and arrogant high level. That's why some people think that right-wing populists are revolutionaries who oppose the dominant perception. But they are not", the UEFA president added.
He also commented on the human rights debate surrounding the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar, which he called "certainly a typical example of lectures by European political populists who do not recognize different cultures, different religions and do not understand that different people have different customs in different environments".