Football
ESPN staff 9y

UEFA claims victory in financial fair play supreme court challenge

UEFA says it has won at the European Union's supreme court after a legal challenge to financial fair play (FFP) rules that curb club spending was thrown out.

UEFA says the European Union's Court of Justice ruled a Belgian court's request for a preliminary judgment was "manifestly inadmissible."

The case went through a local Brussels court after the European Commission decided it had no merit.

The case was brought by a player's agent in Belgium and fan groups linked to Manchester City and Paris Saint-Germain. UEFA fined both clubs €20 million ($21.8 million) in 2014 for breaking FFP rules.

They argued that FFP protects elite clubs, and were represented by lawyer Jean-Louis Dupont. He helped win the landmark Bosman case on the contractual freedom of players 20 years ago.

"UEFA notes with satisfaction the ruling of the European Court of Justice [ECJ] dated 16 July in which it has declared "manifestly inadmissible" the recent request for a preliminary ruling on the legality of financial fair play made by the Brussels Court of First Instance [BCFI]," read the organization's statement.

"The European Court of Justice declared that request as pointless because the court making it [the BCFI] had already - in June 2015 - declared itself incompetent to rule on the merits of the so-called Striani case.

"The European Court of Justice also observed that the national court had failed to provide any of the necessary information to enable the ECJ to address issues of European competition law.

"The European Court of Justice has therefore had for the first time the opportunity to consider the financial fair play system, and has taken the view that the Striani case orchestrated in Belgium has no merits whatsoever.

"UEFA considers this to be a sensible and logical outcome and takes the opportunity to reaffirm its complete confidence in the legality of financial fair play, a system which is backed by the overwhelming majority of stakeholders in European football and which has, in a short space of time, already delivered real, concrete and tangible results which will help safeguard the future and long-standing prosperity of the game in Europe.

"Financial fair play has also been publicly supported on many occasions by the institutions of the European Union, including the European Parliament and the European Commission."

Press Association and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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