The first part of this series looked at the legal framework in which FFP
sits, concluding that FFP occupied a ‘marginal’ legal position – perhaps
legal, perhaps not. Given the significant financial
interests in European football – UEFA’s figures suggest aggregate revenue of nearly €17 billion as at clubs’ 2015
accounts – and the close correlation between clubs’ spending on wages and their
success on the field,[1] a legal
challenge to the legality of FFP’s ‘break even’ requirement (the Break Even
Requirement), which restricts a particular means of spending, was perhaps
inevitable.
And so it followed.
Challenges to the legality of
the Break Even Requirement have been brought by football agent Daniel Striani,
through various organs of justice of the European Union and through the Belgian
courts; and by Galatasaray in the Court of Arbitration for Sport. As an
interesting footnote, both Striani and Galatasaray were advised by “avocat superstar” Jean-Louis Dupont, the lawyer who acted in several of sports law’s
most famous cases, including the seminal Bosman case. Dupont has been a vocal critic of FFP’s legality since its inception. More...
Editor's Note: Christopher is an editor of the Asser International Sports Law Blog. His research interests cover a spectrum of sports law topics, with a focus on financial regulatory disputes, particularly in professional football, a topic on which he has regularly lectured at the University of the West of England.
It is five years since the Union of
European Football Associations (UEFA) formally introduced ‘Financial Fair Play’
(FFP) into European football through its Club
Licensing and Financial Fair Play Regulations, Edition 2012. With FFP having now been in
place for a number of years, we are in a position to analyse its effect, its
legality, and how the rules have altered over the last half decade in response
to legal challenges and changing policy priorities. This article is split into
three parts: The first will look at the background, context and law applicable
to FFP; Part Two will look at the legal challenges FFP has faced; and Part
Three will look at how FFP has iteratively changed, considering its normative
impact, and the future of the rules. More...
Editor's note: This report compiles all relevant news, events and materials on International and European Sports Law based on the daily coverage provided on our twitter feed @Sportslaw_asser.
The Headlines
ISLJ Annual Conference on International Sports Law
On 26 and 27 October 2017, the T.M.C. Asser Institute in The Hague will host the first ever ISLJ Annual International Sports Law Conference. This year's edition will feature panels on the Court of Arbitration for Sport, the world anti-doping system, the FIFA transfer regulations, human rights and sports, the labour rights of athletes, and EU law and sport. We will also welcome the following distinguished keynote speakers:
- Miguel Maduro, former Advocate General at the European Court of Justice and former head of the FIFA's Governance Committee;
- Michael Beloff QC, English barrister known as one of the 'Godfathers' of sports law;
- Stephen Weatherill, Professor at Oxford University and a scholarly authority on EU law and sport;
- Richard McLaren, CAS Arbitrator, sports law scholar and former head of the World Anti-Doping Agency's investigation into the Russian doping scandal.
You will find all the necessary information related to the conference here. Do not forget to register as soon as possible if you want to secure a place on the international sports law pitch! [Please note that we have a limited amount of seats available, which will be attributed on a 'first come, first served' basis.] More...
Editor’s note:
Tomáš Grell holds an LL.M.
in Public International Law from Leiden University. He contributes to
the work of the ASSER International Sports Law Centre as a research
intern.
Concerns about adverse
human rights impacts related to FIFA's activities have intensified ever since its
late 2010 decision to award the 2018 and 2022 World Cup to Russia and Qatar
respectively. However, until recently, the world's governing body of football
had done little to eliminate these concerns, thereby encouraging human rights
advocates to exercise their critical eye on FIFA.
In response to growing
criticism, the Extraordinary FIFA Congress, held in February 2016, decided to include an explicit
human rights commitment in the revised FIFA Statutes which came into force in April 2016. This commitment
is encapsulated in Article 3 which reads as follows: ''FIFA is committed to respecting all internationally recognized human
rights and shall strive to promote the protection of these rights''. At
around the same time, Professor John Ruggie, the author of the United Nations Guiding
Principles on Business and Human Rights ('UN Guiding
Principles') presented in his report 25 specific recommendations for FIFA on how to
further embed respect for human rights across its global operations. While
praising the decision to make a human rights commitment part of the
organization's constituent document, Ruggie concluded that ''FIFA does not have yet adequate systems in
place enabling it to know and show that it respects human rights in practice''.[1]
With the 2018 World Cup
in Russia less than a year away, the time is ripe to look at whether Ruggie's
statement about FIFA's inability to respect human rights still holds true
today. This blog outlines the most salient human rights risks related to FIFA's
activities and offers a general overview of what the world's governing body of
football did over the past twelve months to mitigate these risks. Information
about FIFA's human rights activities is collected primarily from its Activity Update on Human Rights published alongside FIFA's Human Rights Policy in June 2017. More...
Editor’s note: Mario Vigna is a Senior
Associate at Coccia De Angelis Vecchio & Associati in Rome, Italy. His main
practice areas are sports law, commercial law, and IP law. He also has
extensive experience in the Anti-doping field, serving as Deputy-Chief
Prosecutor of the Italian NADO and as counsel in domestic and international sports
proceedings. He is a frequent speaker at various conferences and workshops. He was
not involved in either of the cases discussed below.
I.
Introduction
Gambling in football is a
popular and potentially lucrative activity. It also raises numerous issues. When
faced with the issue of gambling, the European Court of Justice (now Court of
Justice of the EU) determined that gambling was economic activity per se, notwithstanding gambling’s
vulnerability to ethical issues, and thus could not be prohibited outright.[1]
With the legality of gambling established, it was left to the proper
legislative bodies (national legislatures, national and international federations,
etc.) to regulate gambling in order to guard against fraud and corruption. Gambling
was not going to disappear; the dangers inherent to gambling would require
attention. More...
Editor's Note: Frans M. de Weger is legal counsel for the Federation of Dutch Professional Football Clubs (FBO) and CAS arbitrator. De Weger is author of the book “The Jurisprudence of the FIFA Dispute Resolution Chamber”, 2nd edition, published by T.M.C. Asser Press in 2016. Frank John Vrolijk specialises in Sports, Labour and Company Law and is a former legal trainee of FBO and DRC Database.
This second blog will focus
specifically on the sanctions available for FIFA under Article 12bis. It will provide
explanatory guidelines covering the sanctions imposed during the period
surveyed.
Introduction
The possibility to impose
sanctions under article 12bis constitutes one of the pillars of the 12bis
procedure. Pursuant to Article 12bis of the RSTP, edition 2016, the DRC and the
PSC may impose a sanction on a club if the club is found to have delayed a due
payment for more than 30 days without a prima
facie contractual basis[1] and the creditor have put
the debtor club in default in writing, granting a deadline of at least 10 days.[2] The jurisprudence in
relation to Article 12bis also shows that sanctions are imposed ex officio by the DRC or the PSC and not
per request of the claimant.More...
Editor's Note: Frans M. de Weger is legal counsel
for the Federation of Dutch Professional Football Clubs (FBO) and CAS
arbitrator. De Weger is author of the book “The
Jurisprudence of the FIFA Dispute Resolution Chamber”, 2nd
edition, published by T.M.C. Asser Press in 2016. Frank John
Vrolijk specialises in Sports, Labour and Company Law and is a former legal
trainee of FBO and DRC Database.
In this first blog, we will try to answer some questions raised in
relation to the Article 12bis procedure on overdue payables based on the
jurisprudence of the DRC and the PSC during the last two years: from 1 April
2015 until 1 April 2017.
[1] The awards of the Court of
Arbitration for Sport (hereinafter: “the CAS”) in relation to Article 12bis
that are published on CAS’s website will also be brought to the reader’s
attention. In the second blog, we will focus specifically on the sanctions applied
by FIFA under Article 12bis. In addition, explanatory guidelines will be
offered covering the sanctions imposed during the period surveyed. A more
extensive version of both blogs is pending for publication with the
International Sports Law Journal (ISLJ). If necessary, and for a more detailed
and extensive analysis at certain points, we will make reference to this more
extensive article in the ISLJ. More...
Editor's note: This report compiles all relevant news, events and
materials on International and European Sports Law based on the daily coverage
provided on our twitter feed @Sportslaw_asser. You
are invited to complete this survey via the comments section below, feel free
to add links to important cases, documents and articles we might have
overlooked.
The Headlines
The end of governance reforms at FIFA?
The main sports governance
story that surfaced in the press (see here and here) during the last month is related to significant
personal changes made by the FIFA Council within the organization’s
institutional structure. In particular, the FIFA Council dismissed the heads of
the investigatory (Mr Cornel Borbély) and adjudicatory (Mr Hans-Joachim Eckert)
chambers of the Independent Ethics Committee, as well as the Head (Mr Miguel Maduro) of the Governance and Review Committee. The decision to remove Mr Maduro was taken arguably
in response to his active role in barring Mr Vitaly Mutko, a Deputy Prime Minister of Russia, from sitting on
the FIFA Council due to an imminent conflict of interests. These events
constitute a major setback to governance reforms initiated by the football’s
world governing body in 2015. For a more detailed insight into the governance
reforms at FIFA, we invite you to read the recent blog written by our senior researcher Mr
Antoine Duval. More...
This is a follow-up
contribution to my previous blog on human rights
implications of the Olympic Games published last week. Together with
highlighting some of the most serious Olympic Games-related human rights
abuses, the first part has outlined the key elements of the Host City Contract
('HCC') as one of the main legal instruments regulating the execution of the
Olympic Games. It has also indicated that, in February 2017, the International
Olympic Committee ('IOC') revised the 2024 HCC to include, inter alia, explicit human rights
obligations. Without questioning the potential significance of inserting human
rights obligations to the 2024 HCC, this second part will refer to a number of
outstanding issues requiring clarification in order to ensure that these
newly-added human rights obligations are translated from paper to actual practice. More...
Editor’s note:
Tomáš Grell is currently an LL.M. student
in Public International Law at Leiden University. He contributes to
the work of the ASSER International Sports Law Centre as a part-time
intern.
In its press release of 28 February 2017,
the International Olympic Committee ('IOC') communicated that, as part of the
implementation of Olympic Agenda 2020 ('Agenda 2020'), it is
making specific changes to the 2024
Host City Contract with regard to human
rights, anti-corruption and sustainable development. On this occasion, IOC
President Thomas Bach stated that ''this
latest step is another reflection of the IOC's commitment to embedding the
fundamental values of Olympism in all aspects of the Olympic Games''.
Although the Host City of the 2024 Summer Olympic Games is scheduled to be
announced only in September this year, it is now clear that, be it either Los
Angeles or Paris (as Budapest has recently withdrawn its bid), it will have to abide by an additional set of human
rights obligations.
This two-part blog will
take a closer look at the execution of the Olympic Games from a human rights
perspective. The first part will address the most serious human rights abuses
that reportedly took place in connection with some of the previous editions of
the Olympic Games. It will also outline the key characteristics of the Host
City Contract ('HCC') as one of the main legal instruments relating to the
execution of the Olympic Games. The second part will shed light on the human
rights provisions that have been recently added to the 2024 HCC and it will seek
to examine how, if at all, these newly-added human rights obligations could be
reflected in practice. For the sake of clarity, it should be noted that the
present blog will not focus on the provisions concerning anti-corruption that
have been introduced to the 2024 HCC together with the abovementioned human
rights provisions. More...