- Oct 19, 2004
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Clubs ‘to sue Uefa on FFP’
The lawyer who was part of the Bosman case legal team in 1995 believes that clubs would have a strong case against Uefa on FFP
John Goodbody Published: 31 March 2013
Jean-Louis Dupont predicts action against Uefa when FFP is put in place (David Maher)
LEADING lawyers expect legal challenges to the financial fair play (FFP) rules when they come into force next season.
Uefa has brought in the rules to stop the huge losses made by many clubs, several of which have been underwritten by billionaires. Football’s European governing body claims that this practice has distorted the structure of the game across the continent and warns that if clubs do not observe the “break even” principle, they face being barred from taking part in Uefa tournaments, including the Champions League.
Jean-Louis Dupont, a Belgian lawyer who specialises in European law and was part of the legal team who won the Bosman case in 1995, believes that although Uefa has been backed by the European Commission, clubs would have a strong case if they went to the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg because sport is not a special case in European law.
With success in the Champions League worth hundreds of millions of pounds, those clubs bankrolled by billionaires will surely challenge any attempt to ban them.
Writing in The Wall Street Journal, Dupont argues that the introduction of the FFP rules “constitutes collusion and hence a violation of European Union competition law. FFP may also infringe other EU freedoms such as the free movement of workers and services. The next question is whether the objectives of the FFP are legitimate and necessary. The relevant test for sporting rules, therefore, is that if they distort competition or other EU freedoms, they must do so no more than is necessary in pursuit of legitimate objectives.”
One leading British sports lawyer said he believed there was “certainly a case” that the FFP regulations infringe competition rules. Much would depend, however, on what accounting standards were implemented in different countries. He believed that any challenge was more likely to be before the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne because it offered a faster and cheaper route than going to the European Court.
A third lawyer, Mel Goldberg, the president of the British Association for Sport and Law, has researched the subject with barrister Simon Pentol. Goldberg accepts that FFP remains susceptible to challenge before the European Court but thinks that the rules are “fairly sensible in so far as clubs should not spend more than they earn. It is all about not trading at a loss. If you balance your books, you can spend what you like.”
He added: “No legal challenge, as ever, will be mounted until a particular club is banned from a Uefa competition for breaking FFP rules and even then, the given club may not bother if it thinks a legal challenge is not commercially viable.”
Clubs may not decide a challenge is worthwhile if they were barred only from the Europa League rather than the far more lucrative Champions League.