Abstract
This paper seeks to answer the question of how to reconcile the concept of sporting nationality - international sports federations' rules governing athletes' eligibility in national teams - in the European Union (EU) and subsequently all around the world in order to keep the promising alliance between law and sports and prevent creation of dangerous liaison in which courts and other ordinary decision-making bodies interfere with sporting rules. The EU and international sports federations can co-exist under a promising alliance, which is very desirable since, the decisions of EU institutions, primarily the Court of Justice of the European Union, clearly influence the global sporting scene.
The EU institutions take into account the specific nature of sport, respect sports federations' regulatory autonomy and limit themselves in interfering with sporting rules only as long as they breach athletes' rights under EU law. What is more, the EU institutions' decisions contain a valuable set of principles and instructions for the sports federations how to better adapt their rules to EU law requirements and balance their interests with athletes' rights.
Furthermore, the general nature of the decisive elements, most importantly the principle of proportionality, simultaneously enables to apply the EU institutions' conclusions to other legal orders and all around the world. On the other hand, I argue that some rules governing sporting nationality rather make the relationship between the EU and international sports federations and their rules a danger liaison.
The reason for this is that some of these rules in their current state, notably certain waiting periods, quotas of naturalized athletes and rules prohibiting the change of sporting nationality breach EU law provisions protecting the free movement of persons and competition. Taking into consideration the EU institutions' existing sports-related case law, it can be expected that the aforementioned rules would be void under EU law.
The context of sporting nationality rules restricting athletes' rights under EU law is not a problem as such since these rules usually seek a legitimate objective. However, they are often not inherent to these objectives and disproportionate since they go beyond what is necessary to achieve their goals.
International sporting governing bodies should be more attentive to EU law since a potential decision of EU institutions holding their rules incompatible with EU law could represent another Bosman judgment flipping the world organization of sport upside down.