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16 September 2007 / Mike Morgan
Issue: 7286 / Categories: Features , EU , Commercial
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Sporting chance

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Ensuring the good governance of sports while keeping them autonomous is an unenviable task. Mike Morgan reports

The European Commission’s White Paper on Sport was published on 11 July 2007. The paper confirms the Commission’s position that sports activity, insofar as it constitutes an economic activity, does not fall outside the bounds of EU law. The paper will be seen by some sports stakeholders as an erosion of the autonomy of sport as the EU gets ever closer to developing a legal competence for sport.

AUTONOMY OF SPORT

The paper follows on from the Nice Declaration 2000 on the Specific Characteristics of Sport and its Social Function in Europe and José Luis Arnaut’s 2006 Independent European Sport Review, both of which are relevant to the so-called autonomy of sport. Paragraph 7 of the Nice Declaration said:

“The European Council stresses its support for the independence of sports organisations and their right to organise themselves through appropriate associative structures. It recognise that, with due regard for national and Community legislation and on the basis of

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