The governance network of European football: introducing new governance approaches to steer football at the EU level (original) (raw)
Related papers
Legal-administrative implications of international sport for public administration
Administrative Theory & Praxis, 2024
This paper explores the intersection of public administration and its administrative state, transnational and global policy, and international sports governance. We start by exploring autonomy and self-governance in international sport before sharing the structures, legal personalities, and nature of transnational private law interaction with international sport. The implications are illustrated through three examples. The first is the legal-policy interactions of the FIFA World Cup 2022 with Qatar. The second are new interactions of human rights with future World Cups and future Olympics. The third is the role of the Court of Arbitration for Sport and the World Anti-Doping Agency. This leads to three implications for administrative scholarship: lex sportiva implications for public administration, a stretching of the autonomy and self-governance concepts, and expanding the evaluation stage of a policy cycle to include the governance legacies of mega sports events.
The European Model of Sport: Values, Rules and Interests
International Organisations Research Journal, 2018
Recent transformations in the ways that modern sport is managed have fundamentally changed its role in society; previously a simple form of leisure activity and health promotion, sport has become a complex phenomenon and a multibillion dollar business. The combination of sociocultural and economic dimensions makes sport an important tool for the promotion of interests. A leading role in the development of sport throughout history gives the European Union (EU) an advantage in setting the rules for its management, while the size of the sports market in Europe further facilitates the EU's leading role in developing the regulatory basis in this field. The sports model developed by EU institutions plays an important role in the deepening of regional integration processes, promoting the European model outside the region and also the EU's transformation into one of the drivers of the development of the global sports management system. The goal of this article is to identify the specificities of the European model of sport, the instruments and resources used by the EU to promote European values in this field and the universal features of the European approach that make it applicable in other regions. The analysis shows that the EU actively promotes its values, norms and interests by entrenching them into the European sport model and then promoting this model to other countries and regions. Practices and norms developed in the European context are being actively transferred to the international level. Sport, and especially football which is the most popular and among the most profitable sports, has become another area in which European management practices demonstrate their consistency and are being actively applied at the global level. The spread of the European sports model is facilitated by the "spillover" of EU law to the organizations and institutions in which it participates. The EU model is promoted through soft power supported by the authority of the European sports federations and the leading position of the European sports market. By elaborating its own sports policy and encouraging its spread to other regions, the European Union is driving the development of sports management practices at the global level.
This essay presents the evolution of European governance in a parallel symbiosis with football. It describes the EU, this sui generis ‘team’, giving examples, images, dates and events from the world of football. It seeks to contribute to the debate on the changing profile of EU institutions through the looking glass of football ones, as a ‘team’ in the framework of governance and international relations. In particular, it uses the specific institutional example of the Champions League as a source of analogies and regularities for the on-going European experiment. It examines how far EU and football continue to encompass the same joy of accomplishment after the dramatic change in their institutional and political rules of play in an age ruled by the relentless and insatiable pursuit of profit. The paper argues that European governance needs to redefine its integration’s priorities, restoring dedication to and passion for the European project.
Limits of Interest Empowerment in the European Union: The Case Of Football
Journal of European Integration, 2012
The European Union (EU) represents an emerging opportunity structure refining societal actors' chances to get access to and influence over policy-making. While research has mainly focused on lobbying within the legislative arena we provide evidence that competition policy can also be understood as a venue of interest group politics by taking the case of European football. The specific institutional features of competition policy have the potential to increase probability of access and lower costs for political action for certain interest groups but also to limit potential benefits from interest group politics. Professional football players and clubs in Europe have used competition policy procedures as an avenue to challenge the supremacy of governing bodies such as UEFA in the game's organisational structures. Whilst managing some impact in terms of policy, the challengers have attained only moderate influence in football's sectoral governance.
Sports Law and the European Union
CHOREGIA, 2007
For the last thirty years the athletic community as well as academics are dealing with an effort by the European Court of Justice to influence sport law and the rule-making power of member states in the area of sports. In the present paper the reader will find a summary of all the major cases brought before the Court as well as an analysis of their effect. Apart from that, the reader will be able to understand the fact that the Court does not accept the rule of precedent in its decisions as well as the fact that it is rather policy than Treaty provisions that controls it. It remains to see how sports authorities can use these facts to their benefit, if they want to hope for a change of the Courts' case law in the future.