FILE -The headquarters of FIFA is photographed after a meeting of the FIFA Executive Committee in Zurich, Switzerland, Sept. 25, 2015. (AP Photo/Michael Probst, File)
FILE -The headquarters of FIFA is photographed after a meeting of the FIFA Executive Committee in Zurich, Switzerland, Sept. 25, 2015. (AP Photo/Michael Probst, File)
BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union’s top court ruled Friday that some decisions by international governing bodies, such as FIFA and the International Olympic Committee, can be challenged outside Switzerland, opening up a system that currently binds athletes, officials and clubs to accept verdicts there.
A statement from the European Court of Justice said that tribunals in the 27 EU member states “must be able to carry out an in-depth review of those awards for consistency with the fundamental rules of EU law.”
The ECJ ruling in Luxembourg means that EU national courts should be able to review verdicts from the Swiss-based Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). Switzerland is not a member of the European Union.
“The awards made by the CAS must be amenable to effective judicial review," the statement said. It said that “national courts or tribunals must be empowered to carry out ... an in-depth judicial review” to ensure that CAS rulings "are consistent with EU public policy.”
CAS director general Matthieu Reeb said the court's decision limited the review of CAS rulings by EU courts to matters of EU public policy.
"In service to the international sports community, CAS will continue to provide timely and expert dispute resolution worldwide,” he said in a statement.
There was no immediate comment from world soccer governing body FIFA and the IOC.
The decision came after a by Belgian soccer club RFC Seraing and Maltese investment fund Doyen Sports, which led to the ruling Friday. They opposed FIFA rules prohibiting third-party ownership of a player’s registration and transfer rights, and in 2015 asked a commercial court in Brussels to review if those rules breached EU law. The ECJ did not specifically rule on third-party ownership as such, only the scope of CAS decisions.
Seraing’s lawyer, Jean-Louis Dupont, said the club should be compensated after FIFA imposed sanctions including transfer bans and a fine. He added that the ruling has wide implications, challenging the legality of all “forced arbitrations” by mandated international sports federations.
“In summary, the (court) has definitively ended the procedural deception used by international sports federations to evade the proper application of EU law through the imposition of compulsory arbitration outside the EU,” said Dupont, who also helped win the landmark Bosman case on the contractual freedom of players 30 years ago.
The Court of Arbitration for Sport was created in 1984 to give sports a unified and binding legal forum for settling disputes and appeals based in the IOC's home city of Lausanne, Switzerland. It is the mandatory path for athletes to challenge disciplinary and appeal judgments by Olympic sports federations. It rules on cases across dozens of sports and is a key authority in doping cases.
Soccer is by far the biggest client in the CAS caseload of about 950 registered each year. FIFA’s contribution of 2.5 million Swiss francs ($2.75 million) to CAS in 2023 was more than 10% of the court’s revenue that year.
CAS verdicts can be challenged at Switzerland’s supreme court in Lausanne on limited procedural grounds and are rarely overturned. Seraing and Doyen lost at the Swiss Federal Tribunal in 2018.
The ECJ said any CAS decision that binds other courts or tribunals from acting “are contrary to EU law.”
The ruling marks a new legal blow to the authority of sports bodies in Switzerland.
The same European court in Luxembourg has handed down two other major rulings in the last two years under EU competition law — in the case and transfer dispute — that challenged the authority of soccer bodies FIFA and UEFA.
