BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union’s top court ruled on Friday that the decisions of world soccer’s governing body FIFA 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.”
There was no immediate comment from FIFA or CAS.
The decision could end a decade-long legal fight by Belgian soccer club RFC Seraing and Maltese investment fund Doyen Sports.
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.
CAS was created in 1984 to give sports a unified and binding legal forum for settling disputes and appeals based in the International Olympic Committee’s home city Lausanne in Switzerland.
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 Super League case and Lassana Diarra transfer dispute — that challenged the authority of soccer bodies FIFA and UEFA.
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