2025 FIDE GA

 I'm not sure I have ever attended a FIDE General Assembly that has gone 'right'. Whether it is confusion about procedural rules, a lack of quorum, or just downright chaos, something always seems to go wrong.

This was the case with the 2025 FIDE General Assembly (held yesterday), but for me, with the added bonus of a midnight start and a 6:30am finish (a fate the befell all federations in this part of the world).

The big ticket item on the agenda was the readmission of Russia and Belarus into the team events (at the senior level). The FIDE Council had been pushing this for a while, and had laid the groundwork by allowing a 'FIDE' team to compete in the Women's World Teams Championship, a team consisting entirely of Russian players, and who won the event. 

The debate was of course at the level that normally happens at the GA, a combination of speech making, delegates addressing the wrong topic,  the selective presentation of facts, and attempts by both sides to take the moral high ground. For this year it consisted of the tired old trope of 'Sport and Politics should not mix', often stated by federations who actively boycott other federations, both in chess and in other sports. One of the best points raised against this was veteran FIDE official Allen Herbert who pointed out that of all things, sports boycotts are often the most effective at bringing about change. His example was South Africa in the 1970's and 80's, which was particularly relevant, as they were expelled from FIDE, a move spearheaded by the then USSR.

But in the end the motion to allow them to play was passed, and for good measure, a 2nd motion allowing them to play under neutral flags was also passed. The reason for this was in case the first proposal gets bounced by the IOC, they can fall back on the 2nd one. This of course then lead to more confusion as there was a debate about which motion took effect (the most recent one or the first one), and by the time it should have been resolved, a large number of delegates had logged off from the call, meaning that the meeting lacked a quorum.