An assessment of the compatibility of UEFA’s home grown player rule with Article 45 TFEU

This article provides the results of a European Commission study into the compatibility of UEFA’s "home grown player rule" (the Rule) with EU laws on free movement of workers. The Rule was introduced to increase competitive balance, and improve the training and development of young players in European football, but gives rise to indirect nationality discrimination and has the potential to restrict the ability of EU footballers to be employed by clubs in other Member States. Our analysis indicates that, although UEFA’s aims are legitimate under EU law, the Rule has resulted in only a modest impact and it cannot at this stage be deemed to have satisfied proportionality control. The existence of potentially less restrictive alternatives means that UEFA should engage in social dialogue with its stakeholders to determine if other methods could be employed to achieve these aims without recourse to regulations that are intrinsically liable to infringe rules governing the free movement of EU workers

The Lisbon Treaty and EU sports policy: study

A study providing a panorama of the possibilities of EU sports policy at a time when these are being reviewed after the approval of the Lisbon Treaty. In particular, the study assesses from a legal point of view, the potential of the new TFEU to enable the EU to attain the objectives of greater fairness and openness in sporting competitions and greater protection of the moral and physical integrity of sports practitioners whilst taking account of the specific nature of sport

15th Sport&EU Conference Book of Proceedings

Book of abstracts of the 15th Annual Conference of the Association for the Study of Sport and the European Union (Sport&EU)