Abstract
Is there such a thing as EU Sports Law? The simple answer to the question posed in the title to this paper is: yes, there is such a thing as EU sports law! But most simple answers tend to mislead, and the risk is real here too. This paper begins by considering the provisions on sport which were introduced into the EU Treaties by the Lisbon Treaty with effect from December 2009. It then steps backwards to show how, beginning in 1974, EU law has affected sport by subjecting its practices to control, initially in the name of promoting free movement of players across borders and more recently in the name of competition law. The paper then reflects on whether the provisions introduced in 2009 are likely to change the shape of this pre-existing EU sports law.
First published in Global Sports Law and Taxation Reports, 2010(1) pp 10–13; reprinted at International Sports Law Journal 2011(1–2) pp 38–41. Republished in this book with the kind permission of Oxford University Press, www.oup.com.
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Notes
- 1.
Case 36/74 [1974] ECR 1405.
- 2.
COM (2007) 391, page 2. Full documentation is available via http://ec.europa.eu/sport/white-paper/index_en.htm.
- 3.
E.g. the European Year of Sport in 2004 was necessarily presented in the governing legal measure as the European Year of Education through Sport, based on what was then Article 149 EC on education: Dec 291/2003/EC [2003] OJ L43/1.
- 4.
Case C–415/93 [1995] ECR I–4921 para 106.
- 5.
- 6.
- 7.
Cases C-51/96 & C-191/97 Deliége v Ligue de Judo [2000] ECR I-2549.
- 8.
Para. 64.
- 9.
COMP 37.806 ENIC/UEFA, IP/02/942, 27 June 2002.
- 10.
Case C-519/04 P [2006] ECR I-6991.
- 11.
Para. 27.
- 12.
Para. 28.
- 13.
COM (2007) 391. Full documentation is available via http://ec.europa.eu/sport/white-paper/index_en.htm.
- 14.
Staff Working Document, available via the site mentioned in n 13 above, pp. 69, 78.
- 15.
- 16.
Note 9 above.
- 17.
Note 7 above.
- 18.
Decision 2003/778 Champions League [2003] OJ L291/25.
- 19.
Note 10 above.
- 20.
GarcÃa 2007, 202.
- 21.
Cases C-51/96 & C-191/97 n 7 above paras 41–42.
- 22.
Case C-176/96 [2000] ECR I-2681 paras. 32–33.
- 23.
Case C-325/08 [2010] ECR I-0000 para. 40.
- 24.
For a slightly fuller, but still preliminary, attempt see Weatherill 2012.
- 25.
E-4628/2010, available at http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?language=MT&reference=E-2010-4628&secondRef=0&type=WQ.
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Weatherill, S. (2014). Is There Such a Thing as EU Sports Law?. In: European Sports Law. ASSER International Sports Law Series. T.M.C. Asser Press, The Hague. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-6704-939-9_23
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