Politicians condemn, but do they have an ounce of power if this project comes back?

What do Emmanuel Macron, Boris Johnson and Viktor Orban have in common? They were all three headlong against the draft European Football Super League, announced Monday by 12 of the richest and most awarded clubs on the Old Continent. On Tuesday evening, six English clubs finally withdrew from the project, postponed indefinitely. This semi-closed competition, since 15 of the 20 places would have been pre-allocated every year to 15 founding teams, caused an outcry among politicians. But despite their indignant messages, European leaders can do little to prevent such a competition from emerging, other than to embark on an (impossible?) Reform of European Union law.

Political warning shots

In France, the project aroused unanimity against him, National gathering at
Communist Party, and up to the top of the state. “The President of the Republic welcomes the position of French clubs to refuse to participate in a European football Super League project, threatening the principle of solidarity and sporting merit,” Emmanuel Macron said on Sunday evening.

His Hungarian counterpart Viktor Orban, not so often in unison with Paris, also announced that he supported “UEFA, Fifa and the Hungarian Football Federation (MLSZ) in the interest of protecting integrity competitions of federations at national or European level ”. British side, Boris Johnson increased the pressure Tuesday by announcing that “no measures [n’était] dismissed ”by his government to bring down the project of a dissident European Super League. But how to prevent such an initiative, concretely?

Paris wants to change European law

We must look at the side of competition law, believes Sacha Houlié, lawyer and deputy La République en Marche de la Vienne. “The European Union is competent to prevent economic concentrations, the Commission could refuse the creation of a Super League, which would be in the form of a commercial company, because it would concentrate income between a few clubs”. A source close to Uefa tells 20 minutes that it is indeed on the European legislation on competition that opponents of the Super League can bet. Problem, the Vice-President of the Commission precisely dismissed this possibility on Tuesday. “It is not within the competence of the Commission. Those are [l’UEFA et les fédérations nationales de football] who will have to find solutions to these problems ”,
said Margaritis Schinas in Italian daily life Il Messaggero.

It seems that this is the track of a reform of European law favored by the Elysee, according to The Parisian. A fight that promises to be long, and far from being won in advance, according to sports law specialists whom we have consulted, all of whom are critical of the strong reactions of European leaders. “They are distressing, because the politicians seem to completely ignore the law when they qualify this project as potentially illegal”, laments Thierry Granturco, lawyer specializing in sports law. “This Super League complies with European law, both with treaties and with case law, so to thwart it, positive law must be changed”, he explains:

“Just as there is a cultural exception, European law could incorporate a sporting exception, which would specify that the competition rules in this economic sector are derogatory from common law. This would allow sports federations, which today have a monopoly on the organization of competitions, to abuse their dominant position on the market. And that would make the creation of competing championships almost impossible ”.

As the law currently stands, this Super League could therefore compete with the competitions organized by UEFA and the national federations. But would this championship be in accordance with the principle of free competition? A priori, three quarters of the places would be pre-allocated to the founding clubs, excluding the other teams, which could be compared to an anti-competitive system.

The legal puzzle becomes more complex when one takes a look at the Brussels decision on speed skating. In December 2020, the court of the European Union considered in a skating case that “the fact that a federation aims to protect its economic interests is not in itself anti-competitive”. In other words, UEFA and FIFA would be legitimate to defend themselves against the Super League project.

A long fight… and doomed to failure?

If the European leaders really want to ban the Super League, a reform of European law could be done via a European directive or a regulation. In both cases, this project would have little chance of being completed before 2022, if the 27 managed to come to an agreement. The Secretary of State for European Affairs Clément Beaune in any case mentioned Tuesday on France info the French Presidency of the EU, in the first half of 2022, as a horizon for action.

But this prospect is hardly credible for Colin Miège, author of Sport and European law (L’Harmattan, 2017):

“A directive must respect the European treaties, but free competition is enshrined in article 101, as a founding principle of the Union. I do not see how we could fabricate a legislative text that would go against this sacrosanct pillar of the EU, except to rewrite the treaties. And how can we imagine that we would do it to please the federations? “

The president of the scientific committee of the Sport and Citizenship think tank recalls that Nicolas Sarkozy had already pleaded for the establishment of a sports exception during the French presidency of the EU in 2008, to no avail. Hence his feeling that these statements by the leaders are only “political gesticulation”.

Concern for political popularity

A gesticulation that can even make you smile, when the liberals Boris Johnson and Emmanuel Macron plan to sink the Super League by using anti-competitive levers. “The position of Boris Johnson may be surprising, but given the scale that it is taking, and the shock generated by this project among football supporters, that is understandable”, notes the walker Sacha Houlié. “No politician would risk defending this Super League project, it is too unpopular”.

“During the last decades, politicians have not said much about the evolution of football, towards more liberalism and capitalism, of which the creation of this Super League is only the logical continuation ”, observes André Gounot, sports historian at the University of Strasbourg. “We can suspect that they react for the sake of popularity, image, because football fans are very numerous”. A political bet
maybe hazardous initially, but which certainly contributed to panic the English clubs Tuesday, then Italian this Wednesday, just in time.