The announcement of a project for a European Super League has made European leaders jump, brandishing threats and big speeches since Monday.
To block a possible Super League, its opponents would have to go through a legal battle that promises to be long and complex, without any guarantee of victory, in the state of the European treaties.
Given their meager legal weapons to sink the Super League, the reactions of politicians can be suspected of a part of opportunism or even demagoguery.
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 not do much to prevent such a competition from emerging, apart from embarking on an (impossible?) Reform of European Union law.
Political warning shots
In France, the project has aroused unanimity against him, from the National Rally to the 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 ”.
On the British side, Boris Johnson increased the pressure on Tuesday by announcing that "no measure [was] ruled out" by his government to sink 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. It is [UEFA and the national football federations] that will have to find solutions to these problems, ”Margaritis Schinas told the Italian daily
Il Messaggero
.
It seems it is the track of a reform of European law that the Elysee favored, according to
Le Parisien
. 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 politicians seem to be totally ignorant of the law when they qualify this project as potentially illegal", deplores 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 sports 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 European Union court ruled 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 of action.
But this perspective is hardly credible for Colin Miège, author of
Sport and European Law
(L'Harmattan, 2017):
“A directive must respect the European treaties, and 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 think tank Sport and Citizenship recalls that Nicolas Sarkozy had already pleaded for the establishment of a sporting 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 extent 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, the politicians did not say much in front of 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 perhaps risky at the start, but which certainly contributed to panic the English clubs Tuesday, then Italian this Wednesday, just in time.
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