Normative Market Europe: the EU as a force for good in international sports governance?

Abstract

Focusing on legal and policy externalisation, this article demonstrates the necessity of an integrated perspective for understanding the EU’s unique identity in the governance of international sport. It shows that externalisation is characterised by a sequential stage process in which Normative Power Europe (NPE) and Market Power Europe (MPE) dynamics alternate and intertwine, bringing to life a Normative Market Europe. The EU’s NPE identity forms the basis for a unique operating mode, aimed at strengthening the ethical character of international sports governance. The EU’s potential to influence sport governing bodies like FIFA, however, emanates from its MPE identity, notably its large, regulated market. Yet interest contestation and lack of internal cohesiveness have often impeded the EU from becoming a force for good.

Keywords:

• EU identity
• Normative Power Europe
• Market Power Europe
• sports governing bodies

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank Andreas Boogaerts, Colleen Carroll, Thomas Christiansen, Chad Damro, Trisha Meyer, and the anonymous reviewers for their valuable feedback.

Notes

1. Case C-415/93 [1995] ECR I-4921. The CJEU ruled that both the system regulating the international transfer of football players and the quota system restricting the number of foreign players on a football team violated the free movement of workers.

2. These two forms of externalisation are guided by different governance modes. Legal externalisation ‘takes place in a formalised relationship of domination and subordination’; policy externalisation, given the EU’s limited sporting competence, is characterised by a ‘relationship in which the actors are formally equal’ (Lavenex and Schimmelfennig 2009, 797). For the sake of parsimony, this article defines sports policy as the measures presented in official sport-specific EU policy documents. The focus is solely on those measures that have relevance for SGBs.

3. Case 36/74, [1974] ECR 1405.

4. Meca-Medina (Case C-519/04, [2006] E.C.R. II-3291) should be mentioned in this regard. The CJEU essentially held that the notion that a rule would have a purely sporting nature or aim does not suffice to automatically exempt it from the scope of the Treaty (Weatherill 2006).

5. Note that these perspectives are often operationalised through differential epistemologies, but they both assume ideational and structural bases for action (see, for instance, Manners [2002, 240] and Bach and Newman [2007, 832]).

6. According to Manners, these norms are universal since they are ‘generally acknowledged, within the United Nations system, to be universally applicable’ (Manners 2008, 46). The data presented in Table 1 was obtained by conducting a content analysis of the documents that define EU legal and policy action in sport.

7. In its resolutions on the EU Work Plans for sport for 2011–2014 and 2014–2017, the Council requested the Commission to establish Expert Groups (4 in the first Work Plan, 3 in the second) to work on topics such as good governance, match-fixing, gender equality and football players’ agents (Council of the EU 2011, 2014). The work of the Expert Groups has resulted in (non-formal) recommendations, mostly directed at sport stakeholders (European Commission 2014).

8. Mandatory since 2009 for all legislative and non-legislative initiatives that define future policies, impact assessments are intended to present evidence on the advantages and disadvantages of possible policy options by assessing their potential impacts.

9. COMP/36.638 and COMP/36.776.

10. Case 13/76 [1976] ECR 1333.

11. It should be mentioned that the implementation of policy directed at SGBs does not include target-setting and (formal) monitoring. That said, the most recent EU Work Plan for Sport (2014–2017) opens the door to benchmarking and reputation mechanisms (naming and shaming). It foresees the possible introduction of so-called pledge boards, where sport organisations can voluntarily make public their commitment to certain issues.

12. A Commission administrator remarks that ‘it takes strong Commission leadership to resist lobbying by the sports world’ (Interview European Commission administrator, 21 April 2015).

13. Related, opposition to norm-adoption is expected to be larger when externalisation decreases SGBs’ decision-making autonomy, as this entails high costs for SGBs (Geeraert 2016).

14. By contrast, Tony Blair and Gerhard Schröder issued a joint statement, expressing their concern for a liberalisation of the transfer market in football and confirming their support for FIFA and UEFA (Niemann and Brand 2008).