Practical Regulation of the Mobility of Sportsmen in the EU Post <i>Bosman</i>

Sport is recreational, social, educational, healthful, and cultural. It has always been all of these things. Perhaps also it has always been political. In recent years, however, it has become something else besides: economic. Nowadays a lot of money is invested in sport, and sporting competitions often generate enormous amounts of revenue. This has entailed serious repercussions, especially for the relations between individual sportsmen/sportswomen and the sporting clubs and federations that act as brokers for their careers. Into this protected area-for decades a closed shop-now come the European institutions, especially the European Court of Justice and the European Commission, with the declared intention of ensuring respect for the exigencies of Community law while at the same time protecting the specificity and the integrity of sport. Practical Regulation of the Mobility of Sportsmen in the EU Post Bosman comes at a moment when clarification of where this complex and contentious matter currently lies is essential if we are to gauge where it is going. The topic is of special and increasing interest, as official declarations on sport were attached to the Treaties of both Amsterdam and Nice. And, if the draft Constitution for Europe actually enters into force, sport will even become an official area of Union policy. This trend confirms the value and significance of this ground-breaking book for practitioners, policymakers, and regulators in the burgeoning field of sports law.