The International Football Federation (FIFA) announced this Monday the adoption of “a temporary framework” relating to the regulation of player transfers, following a decision by the Court of Justice of the EU, one week before the start of the winter transfer window.
“This framework covers the rules governing compensation for breach of contract, joint and several liability, incentives for breach of contract, international transfer certificates and procedures before the football court,” summarized the proceedings in a press release. It aims to create greater clarity and stability for future registration periods as well as to maintain universal rules. »
Thus, as the opening of the winter transfer window approaches at the beginning of January, FIFA is adjusting, at least provisionally, its regulations on player transfers after a decision by the Court of Justice of the EU which examined in October, at the request of Belgian justice, the case of Lassana Diarra, a French international who contested ten years ago the conditions of his departure from Lokomotiv Moscow.
Due to a drastic reduction in his salary, Diarra left the Moscow club, but the latter deemed the break unfair and demanded 20 million euros from him, reduced to 10.5 million euros. Consequence: the Belgian club Charleroi had given up recruiting the Frenchman for fear of having to assume part of these penalties, in accordance with the FIFA regulations studied by the CJEU.
This regulation is “likely to hinder the freedom of movement of professional footballers”, the Court ruled. The court considered that it “imposed on these players and on the clubs wishing to hire them significant legal risks, unpredictable and potentially very high financial risks as well as major sporting risks, which, taken together, are likely to hinder the international transfer of players.
It is this point in particular that FIFA modified urgently, but “after a fruitful consultation of the main football stakeholders”, it specifies, to comply with the competition rules in force in the EU in particular.
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