European Union Sports and policies

EU Information >> EU Sports

Sport is mainly the responsibility of individual member states or other international organisations rather than that of the EU. However, some EU policies have had an impact on sport, such as the free movement of workers which was at the core of the Bosman ruling, which prohibited national football leagues from imposing quotas on foreign players with European citizenship.

Under the proposed Treaty of Lisbon sports would be given a special status which would exempt this sector from much of the EU's economic rules. This followed lobbying by governing organisations such as the International Olympic Committee and FIFA, due to objections over the applications of free market principles to sport which led to an increasing gap between rich and poor clubs.

Several European sports associations are consulted in the formulation of the EU's sports policy, including FIBA, UEFA, EHF, IIHF, FIRA and CEV. All EU member states and their respective national sport associations participate in European sport organisations such as UEFA.

Sports policies of the European Union

The European Union plays a minor and mostly indirect policy role in sport, because (a) sport is normally considered to be outside the competences conferred by the member states to the European Union and (b) sport is in general organised internally, on a European continental level (which is not the same as the level of the European Union), or globally.

The European Union has a very limited direct role in sport. The European Commission is composed of Directorates-General and several departments. Within the Directorate-General Education and Culture, is the Sport Unit, which is responsible for the following main areas:

cooperation within the Commission and with other institutions on sport-related issues,
cooperation with national and international sports institutions, organisations and federations,
bilateral meetings with sports institutions and organisations and international sports federations.

One of the few specific measures in Sports was taken by Decision No. 291/2003/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 6 February 2003 that established the European Year of Education through Sport 2004.

The activities and initiatives undertaken during 2004 were organised at Community, transnational, national, regional and local level, and was sometimes co-financed by the Community. Activities compromised for instance financial support for transnational, national, regional or local initiatives to promote education through sport.

Although not directed specifically at sport, many of the rules, policies and programmes of the European Union have an impact on the sports world or are of interest to it.

In particular, the common market of the European Union creates the right for any EU citizen to move and work freely in another member state. The landmark Bosman ruling confirmed that this right, when applied to professional athletes, forbids nationality quotas in sports leagues that affect EU citizens. This has changed the face of professional sports in the EU, with top teams now collecting talent from all over Europe, and sometimes even fielding teams with no domestic players at all.

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