EU Law and Sport

Free Movement of Workers and Sport

The free movement of workers and sport is an area where the European Court of Justice has dealt with numerous cases, from Walrave and Koch in 1974 to Simutenkov in 2005 and others, and the one where the impact of EU law has perhaps been most felt by sport.

The EC Treaty contains, among other fundamental  principles, provisions related to the free movement of workers within the EU, which include a prohibition of discrimination on grounds of nationality (articles 12 and 39 EC Treaty). The EC Treaty allows any EU citizen to work freely, without restrictions, within the EU zone and to move from one EU country to another. Sport, in as far as it is an economic activity and where labour relations are concerned, has to apply these principles.

The Bosman ruling and its consequences: Through the Bosman case in 1995 (case C415-93), the European Court of Justice invalidated, insofar as sport constitutes an economic activity, two major components of professional team sport regulations: the transfer fees required at the end of the labour contract between clubs and players and the nationality quotas in competitions between professional clubs (discrimination towards EU citizens). Since 1995, the European Court of Justice has confirmed its jurisprudence (Kolpack in 2003, Simutenkov in 2005) and has extended the applicability of the non discrimination principle to EU external (pre-accession and association) agreements.

Specificity of sport: The ECJ has also acknowledged that purely sporting rules could be justified within the framework of EU law. For instance, the nationality-based criterion for the composition of national teams is justified by the specific nature of national team competitions (competition between nations). The ECJ has also allowed other restrictions to EU law in specific cases in the field of free movement: transfer periods in team sports (Lehtonen, 2000), and selection criteria for national teams (Deliege, 2000). These decisions have defined some aspects of the specificity of sport in EU law.

Free movement and nationality: a never ending story?: Thus, the whole current debate on whether the home-grown player rules promoted by UEFA (and validated by the European Commission in May 2008) or the “6+5” rule promoted by FIFA should be implemented by sport governing bodies shows how in 2009 the issue of free movement is far from being resolved. It further reveals how the incompatibilities between the provisions of EU law and the rules of sport have not been solved in almost 15 years. A possible way forward could be the adoption of a sport policy at EU level, which would allow formal discussions on this issue at a political level between EU institutions, Member States and sport governing bodies.