Global law firm Ashurst Perkins Coie has advised FIFA to secure an important victory before the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in relation to its new framework for football agents – the FIFA Football Agent Regulations or FFAR.
The EU's highest court has endorsed the key elements of the FFAR, including, in particular, a new licensing regime for agents, caps on agent service fees, and conflicts of interest rules prohibiting representation of multiple parties to the same transaction. In doing so, the ECJ rejects arguments by agents that FIFA was not competent to regulate agents' activities in the football transfer system and arguments to the effect that FIFA's rules amounted to a form of cartel between football clubs.
The FFAR are an important element of FIFA’s efforts to modernise football’s regulatory framework, to ensure the proper functioning of the global football transfer system, and the ECJ's ruling is a welcome endorsement that the EU competition rules will not unnecessarily prevent sports governing bodies from regulating their sport.
The full text of the decision rendered by the ECJ can be found here.
FIFA's media release can be found here.
The Ashurst Perkins Coie team acting for FIFA was led by Denis Waelbroeck, Donald Slater and Peter Turner-Kerr, with support from Raphael Dionis. Ashurst Perkins Coie worked together with Hengeler Mueller and Benoit Keane Legal in the proceedings before the ECJ.
