Editor’s note: Kester Mekenkamp is an LL.M. student in European Law
at Leiden University and an intern at the ASSER International Sports Law
Centre. This blog is, to a great extent, an excerpt of his forthcoming master
thesis.
On 24 November
2016, a claim was
lodged before a Zurich commercial court against FIFA’s transfer regulations by
a 17-year-old African football player.[1]
The culprit, according to the allegation: The provision on the protection of
minors, Article 19 of the Regulations
for the Status and Transfer of Players.[2]
The claimant and his parents dispute the validity of this measure, based on the
view that it discriminates between football players from the European Union and
those from third countries. Besides to Swiss cartel law, the claim is
substantiated on EU citizenship rights, free movement and competition law. Evidently,
it is difficult to assess the claim’s chance of success based on the sparse information
provided in the press.[3]
Be that as it may, it does provide for an ideal (and unexpected) opportunity to
delve into the fascinating subject of my master thesis on FIFA’s regulatory
system aimed at enhancing the protection of young football players and its
compatibility with EU law. This three-part blog shall therefore try to provide
an encompassing overview of the rule’s lifespan since its inception in 2001. More...
Editor’s note: Josep
F. Vandellos is an international sports lawyer associated to RH&C (Spain).
He is also a member of the Editorial Board of the publication Football
Legal and a guest lecturer in the ISDE-FC Barcelona
Masters’ Degree in Sports Management and Legal Skills.
Article
6 of Annexe IV (Training compensation) of the
FIFA-RSTP (Ed. 2016) contains the so-called “Special Provisions for the EU/EEA” applicable to players moving
from one association to another inside the territory of the European Union (EU)
or the European Economic Area (EEA).
The provisions regarding training compensation result from the
understanding reached between FIFA and UEFA with the European Union in March
2001[1],
and subsequent modifications introduced in the FIFA-RSTP revised version of
2005 to ensure the compatibility of the transfer system with EU law.[2]
This
blog will focus on the exception contained in article 6(3) Annexe IV of the
FIFA-RSTP. According to this article, when “the
former club” fails to offer a contract to the player, it loses its right to
claim training compensation from the players’ new club, unless it can justify that
it is entitled to such compensation. Instead, the right of “previous clubs” to training compensation
is fully preserved irrespective of their behaviour with the player.[3] From
a legal standpoint, such discrimination between the “former club” and the “previous
clubs” raises some questions that I will try to address in this paper. More...
This is the second and final part of the ‘Real Madrid Saga’. Where the first part outlined the background of the case and
the role played by the Spanish national courts, the second part focuses on the
EU Commission’s recovery decision of 4 July 2016 and dissects the arguments advanced by the Commission to reach it. As
will be shown, the most important question the Commission had to answer was
whether the settlement agreement of 29 July 2011
between the Council of Madrid and Real Madrid constituted a selective economic advantage
for Real Madrid in the sense of Article 107(1) TFEU.[1] Before
delving into that analysis, the blog will commence with the other pending
question, namely whether the Commission also scrutinized the legality of the operation Bernabeú-Opañel under EU State aid law. By way of
reminder, this operation consisted of Real Madrid receiving from the
municipality the land adjacent to the Bernabéu stadium, while transferring in
return €6.6 million, as well as plots of land in other areas of the city. More...
Editor’s note: N. Emre Bilginoglu[1]
is a lawyer based in Istanbul. His book entitled “Arbitration
on Football Contracts” was published in 2015.
Introduction
With a total market value of approximately 911 million
EUR, the Turkish Super League ranks as one of the prominent football leagues in
Europe. Five of the eighteen teams that make up half of the total market value
are based in Istanbul, a busy megalopolis that hosts a population of fifteen
million inhabitants.[2]
As might be expected, the elevated market value brings forth a myriad of
disputes, mainly between the clubs and the players. However, other crucial actors
such as coaches and agents are also involved in some of the disputes. These
actors of the football industry are of all countries, coming from various countries
with different legal systems.
One corollary of rapid globalisation is the
development of transnational law, which is quite visible in the lex sportiva.[3]
Like foreign investors, foreign actors of the sports industry look for some legal
security before signing a contract. FIFA does protect these foreign actors in
some way, providing players and coaches legal remedies for employment-related
disputes of an international dimension. But what if the legal system of the
FIFA member association does not provide a reasonable legal remedy for its
national actors?[4]
More...
“One day Alice came to a fork in the road and saw a Cheshire cat in a
tree. ‘Which road do I take?’ she asked. ‘Where do you want to go?’ was his
response. ‘I don’t know,’ Alice answered. ‘Then,’ said the cat, ‘it doesn’t
matter.”
Tomorrow the Foundation Board
of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) will gather in Glasgow for
its most important meeting since the creation of the Agency. Since the
broadcasting of a documentary alleging systematic doping in
Russian athletics by the German public broadcaster in December 2014, the
anti-doping world has been in disarray. The various independent investigations
(the Pound Report and the McLaren Report) ordered by WADA into doping allegations
against Russian athletes have confirmed the findings of the documentary and the
truth of the accusations brought forward by Russian whistle-blowers.
Undeniably, there is something very rotten in the world anti-doping system. The
current system failed to register a widespread, and apparently relatively open,
state-sponsored scheme aimed at manipulating any doping test conducted in
Russian territory. Moreover, it was not WADA that uncovered it, but an
independent journalist supported by courageous whistle-blowers. More...
Out of all the State aid investigations of recent years involving
professional football clubs, the outcome of the Real Madrid case was probably the most eagerly awaited.
Few football clubs have such a global impact as this Spanish giant, and any
news item involving the club, whether positive or negative, is bound to make
the headlines everywhere around the globe. But for many Spaniards, this case
involves more than a simple measure by a public authority scrutinized by the
European Commission. For them, it exemplifies the questionable relationship
between the private and the public sector in a country sick of never-ending
corruption scandals.[1]
Moreover, Spain is only starting to recover from its worst financial crisis in
decades, a crisis founded on real estate speculation, but whose effects were
mostly felt by ordinary citizens.[2]
Given that the Real Madrid case
involves fluctuating values of land that are transferred from the municipality
to the club, and vice versa, it represents a type of operation that used to be
very common in the Spanish professional football sector, but has come under
critical scrutiny in recent years.[3] 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
We
are looking for an International Sports Law Intern (with a particular interest
in the CAS)! More information can be found here.
The (terrible) State of the World
Anti-Doping System
The fight against doping is still on
top of the agenda after the Russian doping scandal. The national anti-doping
organizations (NADOs) have reiterated their call for an in depth reform of the
World Anti-Doping Agency at a special summit in Bonn, Germany. These reforms are deemed urgent
and necessary to “restore confidence of clean athletes and those who value the
integrity of sport” and secure “the public’s desire for a fair and level
playing field”. The NADOs propose, amongst others things, to separate the
investigatory, testing and results management functions from sports
organizations, and to remove sports administrators from crucial anti-doping
executive functions. More...
Editor's Note: Marjolaine is an attorney admitted to the Geneva bar (Switzerland) who specialises in sports and life sciences. She currently participates as a scientific collaborator at the University of Neuchâtel on a research project to produce the first article-by-article legal commentary of the 2015 World Anti-Doping Code. Her latest book Evidence in Anti-Doping at
the Intersection of Science & Law was published in 2016 in the International Sports Law Book Series of T.M.C. ASSER Press.
INTRODUCTION
On 30 September 2016, a panel of the Court
of Arbitration for Sport (“CAS”) rendered its award
in the matter opposing high-profile tennis player Maria Sharapova to the
International Tennis Federation (“ITF”). Maria Sharapova was appealing the
two-year ban imposed on
her by the ITF Tribunal in June 2016 for her use of Meldonium, a substance
newly added to the WADA Prohibited List 2016[1].
Since neither the ITF nor WADA had chosen to challenge the Tribunal’s decision,
the stakes of the case were rather simple: would the player convince the CAS
panel that she should benefit from a finding of “No Significant Fault or
Negligence”[2],
thereby allowing for a reduction of the sanction down to a minimum of one year,
or should the decision of the Tribunal be upheld? In its award, the CAS panel
decided to grant such finding and reduced the sanction to 15 months.
This blog does not purport to be a ‘comment’
on the CAS award. Rather, it seeks to place the Sharapova matter into a broader
context with respect to a specific issue: the expectations on Athletes when it
comes to their awareness of the prohibited character of a substance,
specifically when taking a medication[3].
In July 2016, I presented at the T.M.C Asser Institute in The Hague various current
challenges of anti-doping that the Meldonium cases exposed (see the video here). One of these
challenges concerned the modalities for including new substances onto the
Prohibited List. This blog represents a follow-up on my presentation, in the
light of the findings contained in the CAS award. More...
On 28 September 2016, the Commission published the
non-confidential version of its negative Decision and recovery order regarding the preferential
corporate tax treatment of Real Madrid, Athletic Bilbao, Osasuna and FC
Barcelona. It is the second-to-last publication of the Commission’s Decisions
concerning State aid granted to professional football clubs, all announced on 4 July of this year.[1]
Contrary to the other “State aid in football” cases, this Decision concerns
State aid and taxation, a very hot topic in
today’s State aid landscape. Obviously, this Decision will not have the same
impact as other prominent tax decisions, such as the ones concerning Starbucks and Apple.
Background
This case dates back to November 2009, when a representative
of a number of investors specialised in the purchase of publicly listed shares,
and shareholders of a number of European football clubs drew the attention of
the Commission to a possible preferential corporate tax treatment of the four
mentioned Spanish clubs.[2]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
September hosted the very last bit of the sport summer 2016, most
notably in the form of the Rio Paralympic Games. Next to the spectacular
achievements displayed during these games, in the realm of sports law similar
thrilling developments hit town. The first very much expected #Sportslaw
highlight was the decision by the German Bundesgerichtshof
in the case concerning SV Wilhelmshaven. The second major (less expected) story
was the Statement of Objections issued by the European Commission against the International
Skating Union.More...