The International Sports Federations and their legal relations with other entities in sports

Abstract

The term ‘sport’ includes two different perspectives that are highly considered nowadays: professional sport and sport as a leisure activity. The sports sector, as a policy area, becomes more and more important in the EU because it is connected with health, education and business policies. Nevertheless, it is important to pay particular attention to the professional sport and legal actions in this sector.

“The first is that sport is a human right. This ensues from the "Declaration of the Principles of International Cultural Cooperation" undersigned by UNESCO on 4 November 1966, and above all, the "Charter of Physical Education and Sport", also adopted by UNESCO on 21 November 1978. Article 1 of this Charter states that "the practice of physical education and sport is a fundamental human right". - Kéba Mbaye, Olympic committee, 1998.

According to the Lisbon Treaty, which came into force on 1 December 2009, sport is competence of the European Union and, as a consequence, the European dimension in sport is supposed to be further developed.

In November 2003, UN Resolution 58/5 was adopted. It required governments to use sport for promoting education, health and peace. After that it was developed in 2011 by the follow-up of the UN General Assembly on the Vienna Declaration and the recognition of sport as a human right officially.

Sport can also be seen as a way of achieving equality through the establishment of general values such as fair play, non-discrimination and teamwork. Starting from 2014, an International Day of Sport for Development and Peace (IDSP) has been established by the UN General Assembly. In 2015 speech, the UN Secretary-General put an emphasis on the role of sport in achieving sustainable progress and change. In order to reach this equality, there must be a clear example, which could be followed. It could be the Olympic movement.

A lot of entities are involved in the regulation of sports, as mentioned above. However, the goal of this particular research is to define the concrete way for a professional athlete, who dedicated all life to the sports performance, to have his/her rights protected. Sometimes it requires knowing the fastest and shortest way, as there are only a few days before all the efforts might lose any sense. It requires reasonable interaction of different entities. The obstacles can be on the interaction of sports federations rules and national law, complicated resolutions of sport disputes arising out of sport competitions or even wrong results of doping tests (it can take years to get your “clean name” back, even if the athlete has done nothing wrong).

Recent years with Coronavirus and situation between Russia and Ukraine, sport community is highly affected by the events. Olympic Games Tokyo 2020, the ban of Russian and Belarus athletes have created new examples of discrimination and great amount of cases for CAS. Most of them are still in process, which makes this thesis highly connected with modern patterns, tendencies and cases.