| Bosman ruling | |||||||||
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European Court of Justice |
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| Submitted 6 October 1993 Decided 15 December 1995 |
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| Full case name | Union royale belge des sociétés de football association ASBL v Jean-Marc Bosman, Royal club liégeois SA v Jean-Marc Bosman and others and Union des associations européennes de football (UEFA) v Jean-Marc Bosman | ||||||||
| Case number | C-415/93 | ||||||||
| Case type | Reference for a preliminary ruling | ||||||||
| Chamber | Full chamber | ||||||||
| Nationality of parties | Belgium | ||||||||
| Procedural history | Cour d'appel de Liège, 9e chambre civile, arrêt du 01/10/1993 (29.426/92) | ||||||||
| Ruling | |||||||||
| 1. Article 48 of the EEC Treaty precludes the application of rules laid down by sporting associations, under which a professional footballer who is a national of one Member State may not, on the expiration of his contract with a club, be employed by a club of another Member State unless the latter club has paid to the former club a transfer, training or development fee. 2. Article 48 of the EEC Treaty precludes the application of rules laid down by sporting associations under which, in matches in competitions which they organize, football clubs may field only a limited number of professional players who are nationals of other Member States. 3. The direct effect of Article 48 of the EEC Treaty cannot be relied upon in support of claims relating to a fee in respect of transfer, training or development which has already been paid on, or is still payable under an obligation which arose before, the date of this judgment, except by those who have brought court proceedings or raised an equivalent claim under the applicable national law before that date. |
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| Legislation affecting | |||||||||
| Interprets Article 48, TEEC | |||||||||
Union Royale Belge des Sociétés de Football Association ASBL v Jean-Marc Bosman (1995) C-415/93 (known as the "Bosman ruling")[1] is a 1995 European Court of Justice decision concerning freedom of movement for workers, freedom of association, and direct effect of article 39[2] (formerly 48) of the EC Treaty. The case was an important decision on the free movement of labour and had a profound effect on the transfers of football players within the EU. The case banned restrictions of foreign EU members within the national leagues and allowed professional football players in the European Union (EU) to move freely to another club at the end of their term of contract with their present team.
The ruling was made in a consolidation of three separate legal cases, all involving Belgian player Jean-Marc Bosman:
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Bosman was a player for RFC Liège in the Belgian First Division in Belgium whose contract had expired in 1990. He wanted to change teams and move to Dunkerque, a French team. However, Dunkerque refused to meet his Belgian club's transfer fee demand, so Liège refused to let him go.[3]
In the meantime, Bosman's wages were reduced as he was no longer a first-team player.[4] He took his case to the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg and sued for restraint of trade citing FIFA's rules regarding football, specifically Article 17.
On 15 December 1995 the court ruled that the system, as it was constituted, placed a restriction on the free movement of workers and was prohibited by Article 39(1) of the EC Treaty (now Article 45 (1) of the Treaty on the functioning of the European Union). Bosman and all other EU football players were given the right to a free transfer at the end of their contracts, with the provision that they were transferring from a club within one EU Association to a club within another EU Association.
Prior to the Bosman ruling, professional clubs in parts of Europe (but not, for example, in Spain and France) were able to prevent players from joining another club even if their contracts had expired. In the United Kingdom, Transfer Tribunals had been in place since 1981 to resolve disputes over fees between clubs when transferring players at the end of their contracts. In addition to this, players can sign a pre-contract with another club for a free transfer if the players' contract with their existing club has six months or less remaining. The Bosman ruling can be compared to the Seitz decision in Major League Baseball, which led to the elimination of the reserve clause and the advent of free agency in North American baseball.
The Bosman ruling also prohibited domestic football leagues in EU member states, and also UEFA, from imposing quotas on foreign players to the extent that they discriminated against nationals of EU states. At that time, many leagues placed quotas restricting the number of non-nationals allowed on member teams. Also, UEFA had a rule that prohibited teams in its competitions, namely the Champions League, Cup Winners' Cup and UEFA Cup, from naming more than three "foreign" players in their matchday squads. After the ruling, quotas could still be imposed, but could only be used to restrict the number of non-EU players on each team.
On 21 April 2005, UEFA 52 member federations unanimously approved a rule designed to increase the number of locally trained players. The measure is an attempt to reverse some of the effects of the Bosman ruling.
Since the ruling came into effect in all of the EU in 1995, several notable players in European football have benefited from the ruling.[5] In 1996, Edgar Davids became Europe's first elite club Bosman transferred player, when he moved from Ajax Amsterdam to AC Milan. In 1999, Steve McManaman became the most lucrative transfer at the time in British football, as "Britain’s first high-profile Bosman departure",[6] when he moved from Liverpool to Real Madrid and the deal resulted in McManaman once becoming the highest paid British player in history, for the years 1999 through 2001.[7] Since then, notable players have become brand names and seized the ruling to command and negotiate deals according to their market value when their contracts expired.
The ruling is notable because clubs are deemed as unable to gain anything with players becoming commodities, even though clubs argued they trained the players and groomed them from youth levels. Many believe the Bosman ruling coincided directly with the heralding a new era of financial gains in football a decade later, in the 2000s, and in 2005, UEFA declared that they were seeking to repair these aspects of the ruling, because it was believed to be the cause of the increasing rich-poor gap between elite and smaller clubs.[8]
The Bosman ruling was considered and distinguished in Lehtonen (2000), a similar case which involved a deadline imposed by FIBA after which basketball teams could not include players who had played for another team in the same season, where it was found that such a restriction was lawful.[9]