FIFPro takes legal action against FIFA over transfer system
Press Release
This article is written in English with a French and Spanish translation underneath.
(Brussels) FIFPro has today filed legal action against FIFA, in the form of a competition law complaint lodged with the Directorate General Competition of the European Commission in Brussels, challenging the global transfer market system governed by FIFA’s regulations as being anti-competitive, unjustified and illegal.
By targeting FIFA’s Regulations on the Status and Transfer of Players (RSTP), FIFPro has asked the European Commission to explore the critical argument that the transfer regulations prevent clubs from fairly competing on the market to acquire sporting talent, harming the interests of players, small and medium sized professional teams and their supporters.
The FIFA RSTP, as the core labour and industry regulation of football, fuels and sustains increasing competitive and financial disparity, invites commercial abuse by third party owners and agents and fails to protect players against abuses of their labour contracts via systematic non-payment.
“The European Commission holds the key to reforming the professional football industry more than any internal governance reform process can, by simply applying the law,” said FIFPro President, Philippe Piat.
“FIFA fails to administer professional football the same way it has failed to govern itself. Commercial interests of a few prevail, while the majority of players and clubs are disadvantaged. It is time the rule of law prevails over the interests of cartels. The ones benefiting from this are few – major clubs, agents and third party owners. The ones undermined are many and we now call for change.”
FIFPro states the transfer system in its current form can no longer be justified or protected by the so-called ‘specificity of sport’. Today, the restrictive effects of the FIFA RSTP have been justified by the pursuit of allegedly legitimate objectives that are meant to serve the interest of football and the public. The objectives of the RSTP, agreed to by the European Commission in 2001, include contractual stability, financial solidarity (redistribution of revenue), competitive balance, integrity and stability of competitions, as well as the training of young players. FIFPro has submitted strong data to the European Commission that the transfer system fails to attain these objectives and in many regards works to the opposite of what was intended.
According to world-renowned football finance expert, Stefan Szymanski, who has been commissioned by FIFPro to analyse the transfer market in support of today’s legal action, it is apparent that the transfer regulations have significantly impacted the economic and social well-being of players, while having done little to promote competitive balance between clubs, financial solidarity (redistribution of revenue) or club stability.
The harmful practice of clubs asking highly-inflated transfer fees is also set to face a great deal of scrutiny in this complaint. FIFPro argues this represents an extreme barrier for clubs to compete fairly for playing talent as the cost of fielding a competitive team is ever increasing.
