EU Sports Law: The Effect of the Lisbon Treaty

Abstract

The influence of the Treaty of Lisbon on sport in Europe is both profound and trivial. It is profound in that for the first time sport is subject to explicit reference within the Treaties establishing and governing the European Union. Given the fundamental principle that the EU possesses only the competences conferred upon it by its Member States the novelty achieved by this express attribution in the field of sport counts as immensely constitutionally significant. But for two reasons the Treaty’s influence is also trivial. First because the content of the new provisions has been drawn with conspicuous caution, so that the EU’s newly acquired powers in fact represent a most modest grant made by the Member States. And second because, notwithstanding the barren text of the pre-Lisbon Treaty, the EU has in fact long exercised a significant influence over the autonomy enjoyed by sports federations operating on its territory. So the Lisbon Treaty reveals a gulf between constitutional principle – where it seems to carry great weight – and law- and policymaking in practice, on which its effect is likely to be considerably less striking. The purpose of this paper is to reflect on the development of ‘EU sports law’ during the long period in which an explicit Treaty mandate was lacking and to assess the extent to which the Lisbon Treaty will change the picture. A question which also deserves to be addressed is one that goes beyond the specific case of sport: why, in a Treaty which is in many ways marked by assertion of State control over and in some respects autonomy from the pattern of EU integration, has sport found its way into the very small group of policy areas in which EU competences have been formally increased?

First published in: A. Biondi & P. Eeckhout (eds.), EU law after Lisbon, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2012, p. 403–419.