Sport is life, fun, passion but also business. It is not easy to draw a bright line between sport as an economic activity and sport as a crucial cultural element of society. In Europe, the stakes are prodigious from either perspective. On the one hand, sport represents 4% of the GDP of the European Union; on the other, there are in the EU more than 800,000 sport clubs with more than 70 million members. In numerous ways, the former depends on the latter, giving rise to a plethora of subtle tensions. For decades the EU institutions have struggled with the legal issues that arise from these tensions, and the debate has come to be encapsulated in the complex concepts of the sport exception’ and the specificity of sport.’ Now, the pending Reform Treaty, if ratified, will finally provide a legal basis for a Community action in the field of sport. .eText ISBN: 9789041148933
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