Editor’s note: Guido graduated cum laude from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. He teaches law at the Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam. He specializes in sports law and provides legal advice for the professional sports sector.

Introduction

This blog is a commentary on a recent case that hit like a bombshell in the Netherlands (and beyond) during the recent Olympic Games in Rio. The case concerns a Dutch athlete, Yuri van Gelder, who reached the Olympic finals in his sport, got sent home by ‘his’ NOC (NOC*NSF) after a night out in Rio and launched legal proceedings in front of a Dutch court to claim back his place in the finals. This commentary will attempt to explain the Dutch ruling and evaluate whether a different legal route would have been possible and preferable.

Yuri van Gelder is a Dutch gymnast, who is specialized in the rings. He became internationally known as ‘The Lord of the Rings’ after winning the gold medal at the World Championship in Melbourne in November 2005. After some setbacks in his career, he was not able to qualify for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. In 2009, during the Dutch Championships he was tested positive on the use of cocaine. He admitted that he had a drug problem and had been using cocaine for some years. He was suspended for a year by the Dutch Gymnastics Federation (KNGU), excluded from the 2012 London Olympics under the regulations of the IOC and even lost his job in the military. After winning the gold medal at a World league game in Gent on his comeback in 2010, he was taken off the team for the World Championships by the KNGU, claiming that he had used cocaine again.

In October 2011 the CAS found the IOC-rule that excluded athletes, who had been suspended for six months or longer, from future Olympic Games to be invalid and unenforceable. Van Gelder was therefore allowed to participate at the 2012 London Olympics, but again was not able to qualify, after failing to meet the required score at the World Championship in Tokyo at the end of 2011. From that moment on, the athlete decided to fully focus on the 2016 Rio Olympics, for which he eventually qualified. Like all other Dutch athletes who qualified and had been selected for the 2016 Rio Olympics, Van Gelder had to sign a so called ‘Athlete Agreement’ with NOC*NSF, which encapsulates the period of preparation before as well as the duration of the Games. At 33 years of age, these Olympics were his last chance to finally win that Olympic medal he so anxiously craved for.

Sent home from the Olympics

On Saturday 6 August in Rio, Van Gelder qualified for the individual finals on the rings, which were to take place nine days later, on 15 August. That same Saturday night he left the Olympic village and came back somewhere around 5 am. On Sunday he stayed in bed until approximately 3 pm, thereby missing a scheduled training session with the team. On Monday 8 August, the NOC*NSF, after hearing Van Gelder, disqualified him from further participation in the Games. That same day, an NOC*NSF employee was sent with the athlete to escort him to the airport from where he was flown back to the Netherlands. The NOC*NSF then removed Van Gelder from the finals through the International Gymnastics Federation (FIG), which appointed a replacement. A short press release by NOC*NSF stated that, in consultation with the KNGU, Van Gelder was sent home after the Federation had informed the NOC that he had come back to the village early in the morning, in spite of the team rules. It further stated that the athlete had admitted to the use of alcohol. This fueled speculation in the media, considering Van Gelder’s past. However, there was also criticism regarding the NOC*NSF’s decision, as many felt that it was disproportionate to disqualify an athlete, who had worked so hard to reach the finals, for celebrating one night out with still more than a week to go to those finals.

Van Gelder, now back in the Netherlands, took a lawyer and decided to start proceedings in front of the Dutch interlocutory judge of the Court of Gelderland (the Van Gelder Case). The oral proceedings, broadcasted live on Dutch television, took place on Friday 12 August, three days before the Olympic finals.

The ruling of the interlocutory Judge of Gelderland

Van Gelder’s lawyer requested from the court to order NOC*NSF to do everything in its power to make sure Van Gelder could participate in the individual finals on the rings on 15 August, including starting proceedings before the CAS Ad Hoc Division in Rio, or that NOC*NSF assist Van Gelder in starting proceedings for the CAS Ad Hoc Division and grant him a fee in advance for the costs.[1]

The court had to determine on which grounds the decision(s) to disqualify Van Gelder from participating in the Games had been taken and whether the severity of the measure(s) was proportionate in relation to the noncompliance with the obligations laid down in the Athlete Agreement. In doing so, the interlocutory judge applies a ‘marginal test’, which means he will keep certain deference towards the challenged decision and will consider only whether the decision ‘could reasonably have been made’.

The Athlete Agreement states that the athlete is expected to make every effort to ensure that he is capable of the maximum athletic performance, in preparation for and during the Olympics, and thereto devotes himself to the ‘Program’ completely and with optimal athletic effort.[2] Furthermore, the athlete is expected to behave as a good member of ‘TeamNL Rio 2016’ both during competition and elsewhere, having in mind the rules of the IOC Code of Ethics but not only.[3] If the athlete is not complying with the obligations as laid down in the Agreement, the NOC*NSF can decide to exclude the athlete from participating in the Games and/or impose a loss of (the right to) a medal bonus.[4] Before taking such a decision the athlete always needs to be heard/questioned.[5]

The court held for a fact that Van Gelder was told by his trainer through ‘WhatsApp’ not to stay out too late, that he should not drink and that he had to train the next day with the team.[6] However, the court was not convinced of Van Gelder’s noncompliance with the ‘behavioral rules’ enshrined in article 6, paragraph 4 of the Athlete Agreement. The Athlete Agreement or the IOC Code of Ethics do not define or specify clearly what these ‘behavioral rules’ stand for, even though the measures the NOC can take can severely affect the athlete. The court considers that these kind of behavioral rules should be drafted more precisely and should be communicated more clearly to the athletes. Thus, merely leaving the Olympic village without permission, drinking, and coming back early in the morning cannot be seen as violating article 6, paragraph 4 of the Agreement with the NOC.[7]

However, the fact that Van Gelder was warned and still went out drinking, came home early in the morning and missed a scheduled training, is undoubtedly coming short of the obligation laid down in article 6, paragraph 3 of the Athlete Agreement. This behavior is contrary to his duty to commit to the training and competition schedule.[8] Furthermore, the court continued, the athlete’s behavior undermined the team’s efforts and, considering Van Gelder’s past, this has resulted in a breach of trust with his trainer and with the NOC*NSF. Although it is possible that, based on this behavior, another NOC would have taken a different decision than kicking the athlete out of the Olympics, the court considers this irrelevant as it only applies a marginal test.[9] In addition, Van Gelder was questioned and heard twice before the decision was made. The decision therefore cannot be considered to have been made in haste or without proper deliberation.[10] In the end, the court determined that the NOC*NSF could reasonably decide that Van Gelder has committed a serious breach of his contractual duties under the Athlete Agreement. The same applied to the decision to disqualify Van Gelder from further participation in the Games.

A different legal route: The CAS Ad Hoc Division in Rio

Could Van Gelder, instead of going to the Dutch court, have taken a different strategic approach in this case? In the author’s opinion this would have been possible, as the CAS has (since the 1996 Atlanta Olympics) set up an Ad Hoc Division with the purpose of providing for arbitration of disputes, insofar as they arise during the Games, within 24 hours.[11] In the case of a request for arbitration against a decision by an NOC, the claimant must, before filing such a request, have exhausted all the internal remedies available to him pursuant to the statutes or regulations of the sports body concerned, unless the time needed to exhaust the internal remedies would make the appeal to the CAS Ad Hoc Division ineffective.[12] In this case, the internal remedy can be found in the Athlete Agreement, which states that when a dispute arises between the parties during the Games concerning or related to the compliance of the Agreement, the concerned party informs the so-called ‘Chef de Mission’. If the Chef de Mission is incapable of resolving the dispute, it will be send to a committee of binding advisors.[13] This committee has jurisdiction in case of urgency and where the athlete and NOC*NSF both choose an advisor, both advisors in turn choose an independent chairman, after which the committee gives a binding decision to end the dispute.[14]

Why Van Gelder had not chosen to apply the internal dispute resolution procedure of article 22, paragraph 3 and 4 of the Athlete Agreement is not clear from the facts of the case. In that regard, the events of 8 August, when Van Gelder was questioned or heard, become (even more) important. The Dutch courts stated that Van Gelder was questioned twice by the NOC*NSF, but did not clarify what was discussed. The only sure thing is that directly after the decision by the NOC*NSF, Van Gelder was escorted to the airport and flew back to the Netherlands. Would he still have left the country if he had been informed that the Agreement provided for an internal procedure within NOC*NSF, aimed at resolving disputes during the Games, in which he had the right to appoint one of the binding advisors? If such a procedure would have taken place and Van Gelder would have lost, an appeal in front of CAS would still have been possible. Furthermore, would he have chosen to fly back, if he had been advised that the CAS Ad Hoc Division had jurisdiction in cases of urgency or if the NOC was unwilling or unable to trigger its internal procedure? Would he have made the same choices had he known that it would help his case before the CAS Ad Hoc Division if he had attended any hearing in person?

What is clear is that Van Gelder got legal representation when he was back in the Netherlands. At that point a flight back to Rio was rather costly for the athlete. An internal procedure with the NOC*NSF might have been impractical to carry out with eight days remaining to the final, but informing the NOC*NSF in writing that there was a dispute and requesting an internal procedure could have (regardless of the NOC’s reaction) helped to establish the jurisdiction of the CAS Ad Hoc Division if needed. This CAS Ad Hoc Division procedure could also have been started from the Netherlands.

Conclusion

The remaining unknown is whether the CAS Ad Hoc Division would have ruled in favor of Van Gelder and/or have granted him access to the finals. As the Dutch court stated, the Athlete Agreement is rather unclear with respect to the obligation of an athlete to act as a good team member. The CAS Ad Hoc Division might have taken this vagueness into consideration. Furthermore, the CAS Ad Hoc Division would not have applied the same level of deference as the Dutch court. It could have also taken into account the fact that the consequences of the decision of the NOC*NSF were very severe for the athlete, especially since this would be his last Games. Against all this, the fact would have remained that the behavior of the athlete did breach article 6, paragraph 3 of the Athlete Agreement and that a replacement for Van Gelder in the finals was already appointed. Yet, even if the CAS had invalidated the decision by the NOC without granting Van Gelder a place in the finals, he would have been in a good position to claim damages.

The conclusion that can be drawn from this episode is that Van Gelder could have followed a different legal route. This might have provided the athlete a better chance at winning his legal challenge and get back into the Olympics. The Dutch court has made it clear that it wants the ‘behavioral rules’ drafted by the NOC*NSF, or other sports bodies for that matter, to be more precise and better communicated to the athletes, especially when the measures at the disposal of the NOC can severely affect the rights of an athlete. Besides not drinking, going to bed on time, and never missing training a week before the most important finals of your life, there is another lesson to be learned from the case. As an athlete, when facing sanctions from a Federation, NOC or other SGBs, it is wise to get legal representation immediately. This might increase your chances of successfully challenging the decision and taking part in the Olympic Games or any other competition.

[1] Van Gelder Case, point 3.1.

[2] Article 6, paragraph 3, Athlete agreement. The Program is defined in the agreement as: The training and competition schedule for the Athlete, approved by the Federation after consultation with NOC*NSF, with the goal of qualifying for and participating in the Olympic Games.

[3] Article 6, paragraph 4, Athlete agreement. TeamNL Rio 2016 is defined in the agreement as: The group of both athletes and their trainers/coaches, that is participating in the Olympic Games (and with whom NOC*NSF has a written agreement for the Olympic Games Rio 2016) and that has asked for accreditation by OCOG through NOC*NSF.

[4] Article 20, paragraph 1, sub a and b, Athlete Agreement.

[5] Article 20, paragraph 2, Athlete Agreement.

[6] Van Gelder Case, point 4.3.

[7] Ibid, point 4.6.

[8] Ibid, point 4.7.

[9] Ibid, point 4.9.

[10] Ibid, point 4.10.

[11] See on the CAS Ad Hoc Division for example: C. Keidel and A. Engelhard,’The Legal Framework of the CAS Ad Hoc Division at the Rio Olympic Games’, LawInSport August 4 2016, via: http://www.lawinsport.com/articles/item/the-legal-framework-of-the-cas-ad-hoc-division-at-the-rio-olympic-games, viewed on the 24th of August 2016. And from the same authors: ‘Key Ad Hoc Division Cases handed down at the Olympic Games, LawInSport August 4 2016, via: http://www.lawinsport.com/articles/item/key-cas-ad-hoc-division-cases-handed-down-at-the-olympic-games, viewed on the 24th of August 2016.

[12] See Article 1 of the Arbitration Rules applicable to the CAS ad hoc division for the Olympic Games.

[13] Athlete agreement, Article 22, paragraph 4.

[14] Ibid, Article 22, paragraph 3.

My favourite speed skater (Full disclosure: I have a thing for speed skaters bothering the ISU), Claudia Pechstein, is back in the news! And not from the place I expected. While all my attention was absorbed by the Bundesverfassungsgericht in Karlsruhe (BVerfG or German Constitutional Court), I should have looked to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg (ECtHR). The Pechstein and Mutu joint cases were pending for a long time (since 2010) and I did not anticipate that the ECtHR would render its decision before the BVerfG. The decision released last week (only available in French at this stage) looked at first like a renewed vindication of the CAS (similar to the Bundesgerichtshof (BGH) ruling in the Pechstein case), and is being presented like that by the CAS, but after careful reading of the judgment I believe this is rather a pyrrhic victory for the status quo at the CAS. As I will show, this ruling puts to rest an important debate surrounding CAS arbitration since 20 years: CAS arbitration is (at least in its much-used appeal format in disciplinary cases) forced arbitration. Furthermore, stemming from this important acknowledgment is the recognition that CAS proceedings must comply with Article 6 § 1 of the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR), in particular hearings must in principle be held in public and decisions freely available to all. Finally, I will criticise the Court’s finding that CAS complies with the requirements of independence and impartiality imposed by Article 6 § 1 ECHR. I will not rehash the  well-known facts of both cases, in order to focus on the core findings of the decision.

I.               CAS arbitration is recognised as forced arbitration: Hallelujah!

As many of you will know, longstanding doctrinal debates have been raging on the question whether athletes freely consent to CAS arbitration.[1] I have argued at length that CAS arbitration is fundamentally post-consensual arbitration and I am obviously quite happy to see the ECtHR endorsing this view today. However, this is not true in all CAS cases: ordinary arbitration often involving commercial disputes will most likely be consented to by both parties. Moreover, as will be discussed below, the ECtHR choose to distinguish between Pechstein and Mutu in its assessment of the free consent to CAS arbitration.

Regarding Pechstein, the key paragraphs of the decision are found between §109 and §115. The Court finds that the International Skating Union (ISU)’s regulations were imposing CAS’ jurisdiction for disciplinary matters (§109) and that Pechstein was forced to accept the arbitral clause if she was to participate in ISU competitions (§110). In this context, it refers to the famous holding of the Swiss Federal tribunal in the Cañas decision acknowledging the forced nature of arbitration in sport (§111) and to the ISU decision of the European Commission finding that the ISU is in a quasi-monopolistic position on the market for the organisation of speed skating competitions (§112). This leads to the key deduction by the Court, that Pechstein’s choice in the present case “was not to participate in one competition instead of another, depending on her acquiescence or not to the arbitral clause” (§113). Thus, her case is not deemed analogous to the commercial arbitration cases handled previously by the ECtHR. Instead, the Court holds that “[i]n light of the effects that a non-acceptance of the arbitral clause would have on the professional life of the claimant, one cannot assert that the latter has accepted the clause in a free and non-equivocal fashion.” (§115) Hence, the Court concludes, “even though the clause was not imposed by law but by the regulations of the ISU, the acceptance of the jurisdiction of the CAS by the claimant must be understood as a “forced” arbitration in the sense of [the Court’s] jurisprudence”. (§115) Thus came to an end a never-ending doctrinal debate on the consensual nature of CAS arbitration, at least when the CAS clause is imposed by a dominant SGB as a condition to participate in sports competitions.

Interestingly, the Court distinguished Mutu from Pechstein. Indeed, the Court notes “the situation of [Mutu] is different from [Pechstein’s] because the applicable regulation of the sporting federation [FIFA] involved did not impose arbitration but left the choice of dispute resolution mechanism to the contractual freedom of clubs and players” (§116). Mutu invoked the imbalanced between clubs and players to argue that he was forced to accept the clause. Yet, the Court rejects this line of arguments on the basis that he failed to provide evidence supporting the fact that all the players at Chelsea had accepted an arbitration clause or that no other club would have recruited him without the insertion of an arbitration clause into his employment contract (§117-119). The Court concludes that contrary to Pechstein, Mutu “has not demonstrated that the only choice available to him was to accept the arbitration clause to be able to earn a living through the professional practice of his sport, or to refuse it and renounce altogether his professional career.” Hence, the Court considers that Mutu’s situation is not a case of ”forced” arbitration (§120). Nonetheless, the Court’s assessment of the consent to arbitration is quite strict: not only should the consent be free, it must also be unequivocal. In other words, Mutu by freely opting for the jurisdiction of CAS instead of the national courts must “have renounced in full awareness the right to have his dispute with Chelsea decided by an independent and impartial tribunal” (§121). In the present case, as Mutu challenged the independence and impartiality of the CAS arbitrator nominated by Chelsea, the Court considered that one cannot take for granted that he had renounced unequivocally to contest the independence and impartiality of the CAS in a dispute involving Chelsea (§122). This part of the judgment has potentially extremely wide implications beyond sports arbitration, as the Court seems to indicate that any challenge to the independence or impartiality of an arbitrator could harm the validity of an arbitration clause freely consented to by the parties.

In conclusion, after this decision it will be very difficult to argue that disciplinary cases (e.g. doping cases) submitted to the CAS through the appeal procedure are grounded in free consent. Nonetheless, as pointed out by the Court in § 98 of the ruling, there are good post-consensual foundations to justify forced CAS arbitration. This post-consensual arbitration might come as a surprise to some, but law is fundamentally a pragmatic practice of social ordering, which is flexible enough to adapt to specific realities. The fact that in the world of sport a type of transnational authority is exercised by a network of (mainly) Swiss associations, which submit their final disciplinary decisions to the mandatory review of the CAS, might be necessary to ensure that international sporting competitions take place on a level playing field. However, and this is the great virtue of the present judgment, CAS will not be allowed to hide behind a fictitious arbitration label to escape full compliance with the procedural rights enshrined in Article 6 § 1 ECHR. 

II.             CAS arbitration must comply with Article 6 § 1 ECHR

The most important consequence of the Court’s recognition that CAS arbitration was forced in the case of Pechstein and equivocal in the case of Mutu is that CAS has to fully comply with the fundamental procedural rights guaranteed by Article 6 § 1 ECHR (in particular its civil limb, see the ECHR guide on Article 6). Specifically, the Court focused on the publicity of hearings and the independence of the CAS. Regarding the former it concluded, rightly in my view, that the lack of publicity of Pechstein’s hearing violated the ECHR. However, I (and more importantly two judges of the ECtHR) do dissent from the Court’s finding that the CAS is sufficiently independent vis-à-vis the SGBs. 

A.    The day CAS went public: Towards transparency in CAS proceedings and beyond

The CAS is at the same time one of the globe’s most famous and secretive transnational courts. Every sports fan around the world knows it and many journalists follow its press releases and skim through its awards (when published). Based on citations in the media, it is probably one of the (if not the) most covered and publicly discussed international courts, and yet it is also the most secretive. The publicity of hearings and judgments of national and international courts is the norm around the world, and confidentiality an exception reserved to cases in which the security and/or the privacy of an individual might call for it. In scholarship, the transparency of the CAS is often favourably compared to commercial arbitration as it publishes some (systematically less than 30%) of its awards. Yet, as is readily acknowledged by this judgment, the true comparison should be made with national and international courts, as the jurisdiction of the CAS is not grounded on free consent.

In practice, the Court found that in the Pechstein case, the CAS should have organised a public hearing as Pechstein expressly requested. Indeed, the Court points out that “the questions discussed in the framework of the challenged procedure – which related to the question whether the claimant was rightly sanctioned for doping, and for which the CAS heard numerous experts – necessitated the organisation of a hearing under the control of the public” (§182). The Court notes in support of its finding that “there was a controversy over the facts and that the sanction imposed on the claimant had a ignominious nature, which was susceptible to damage her professional reputation and credibility” (§182). And concludes that the lack of publicity of the debates before the CAS violates Article 6 §1 ECHR.

This is a first important step towards imposing more transparency at the CAS (I have argued for radical transparency in a presentation at the Play The Game conference last year). Yet, the decision of the Court is not without ambiguity: will the CAS have to hold public hearings only when requested by the parties or should it systematically hold public hearings and revert to confidentiality only in exceptional circumstances? The existing case law of the ECHR points, in my view, to the latter alternative, but even the former would be a big leap forward for the CAS. Indeed, the a minima reading (read also on this issue the outstanding blog by Nick de Marco) of the judgment implies that the CAS will have to organise a public hearing if requested by one of the parties. In any case, a waiver of such a hearing will need to be freely consented to. Furthermore, and this was not touched upon in the present decision, Article 6 §1 ECHR also obliges to publicise judgments once adopted, with only the narrowest of exceptions. Currently, CAS is clearly in contravention with this obligation, as it does not systematically publish its (appeal) awards. This fundamental lack of transparency will have to be remedied quickly if the CAS is to operate in conformity with the present judgment.

B.    A fundamental dissent on CAS independence

The final, key, aspect of the judgment concerns the Court’s findings related to the independence and impartiality of the CAS. Under Article 6 § 1 ECHR, a case must be heard by an independent and impartial tribunal. It is, at least in my eyes, highly doubtful whether the CAS should be considered as such, yet the Court decided otherwise. This decision was strongly challenged in a dissent by two judges (including quite ironically the Swiss judge). I will first present the key parts of the analysis of the Court and then provide a critique of my own to the Court’s holdings. I believe the most important question is not related to the independence or impartiality of the individual arbitrators involved in the Mutu and Pechstein case, but concerns the structural independence of the CAS from the SGBs, and I will thus focus only on the latter.

The key holdings of the Court are found at §§151-158 and concern only the Pechstein leg of the ruling, as only she challenged the structural independence of the CAS. The Court holds first that the CAS’s financial dependence on the Olympic movement is not problematic because analogically the State finances national courts (§151). It reminds then that, back when the Pechstein case was heard in 2009, the International Council of Arbitration for Sport (ICAS) was nominating one fifth of the arbitrators having the interest of the athletes in mind, while being itself composed mainly of individuals affiliated with SGBs susceptible to face proceedings against athletes at the CAS (§154). Moreover, the Court stresses that arbitrators were nominated for a term of four years renewable, without limits on the number of terms, and the ICAS had the power to revoke an arbitrator by a summarily motivated decision on the basis of article R35 of the CAS Code (§155). Nonetheless, the Court finds that Pechstein did not provide concrete elements challenging the independence and impartiality of any of the 300 arbitrators on the CAS list at the time (§157). In the crucial part of the decision, the Court acknowledges that while “it is ready to recognise that the organisations susceptible to face the athletes in the framework of the disputes brought before the CAS were exercising a real influence on the mechanism of nomination of the arbitrators in place at the time, it cannot conclude that, only on the basis of this influence, the list of arbitrators was composed, even in majority, of arbitrators who could not be deemed independent or impartial, individually, objectively or subjectively, from the said organisations” (§157). Henceforth, the Court decides that it has no reason to diverge from the assessment of the Swiss Federal tribunal regarding the independence of the CAS.

In my view, the Court is right on one point. The financing of the CAS by the SGBs is not per se threatening the independence of the CAS and should actually be welcomed as an adequate form of quasi-public financing of sporting justice. However, this is true only if the ICAS and the CAS administration are stringently separated from the bodies that are supposed to be checked by the CAS and whose decisions it is reviewing. Quite paradoxically the Court recognises the influence of the SGBs on the ICAS, which was evident at the time the Pechstein case was heard and is still apparent nowadays (the SGBs nominate 12 individuals out of the 20 members of the ICAS and the ICAS is headed by an IOC Vice-president), but it does not deem it sufficiently problematic to challenge the independence and impartiality of the CAS. This is a strange conclusion for a Court specialised in procedural justice (for a similar perplexity see §§ 7-10 of the dissent). The ICAS does not only control who gets to be appointed as a CAS arbitrator, it also controls who gets to preside over the Appeal and Ordinary Divisions of the CAS, and who gets to be appointed as CAS Secretary General. All of this happens without any minutes of the ICAS meetings being published, thus without any transparency on the reasons that led to the appointment of X over Y. This alone should have pushed the ECtHR to have some serious concerns over the appearance of control by the SGBs over the ICAS and, therefore, over the CAS. Moreover, and what I feel is the major argument speaking against CAS’s independence from the SGBs, even if one accepts the Court’s point that an athlete will be able to find a CAS arbitrator on the list who is not biased, in appeal cases the president of the panel will be ultimately nominated by the President of the Appeals Division. Thomas Bach, now President of the IOC, was the President of the Appeals Division from 1994 to 2013, since then Corinne Schmidhauser, who is the President of AntiDoping Switzerland and a member of the Head of the Legal Committee of Swiss Ski has taken over his former position. While it is often argued that if the parties agree on a president, the President of the Division will merely ratify their choice (§ 127), the issue is that one side (the SGBs) will be in a strong position to impose a name to the other (the athletes). Indeed, the SGBs bargain in the shadow of a final decision by the president of the Appeal Division, who be it Thomas Bach or Corinne Schmidhauser was and still is clearly biased in their favour. This simple institutional set-up, easy to reform but still in place, is the Gordian knot of the control of SGBs over the CAS.  The Court simply ignored this argument (as did the BGH in 2016, triggering an attempt at a revision of the judgment), which was raised by Pechstein’s lawyers (§ 124). In doing so, it decided to side with a system that is at odds with the core of its own jurisprudence on the independence and impartiality of tribunals, as powerfully outlined by the dissent. Maybe, the Court felt it had already done enough and it did not want to destabilise the CAS further, but it certainly missed a great opportunity to provide a fairer judicial process to thousands of athletes worldwide.

Conclusion: The end of the beginning for the CAS

A few years ago, in a presentation on the Pechstein ruling of the Oberlandesgericht München, I wondered whether the case was the beginning of the end for the CAS or (more optimistically) the end of the beginning. By the latter, I meant that the CAS would enter into a new dimension with the decision. This new era was, unfortunately, delayed by the surrealist judgment of the BGH, which the ECtHR has in my view partially corrected with this ruling. As from this decision, the CAS will not be able anymore to claim that it is an arbitral tribunal legitimated through the free consent of the parties. The ECtHR has shattered, forever, this fiction. It did not replace it with a clear alternative foundation, however. In fact, the CAS is not a product of national law or of an international treaty. It is, instead, simply the artefact of transnational power and of the necessities of global sports governance. At the same time as the ECtHR recognised its usefulness and existence, it also held that it ought to be tamed too. This is the meaning of the Court’s finding that CAS must comply (like any national court in Europe) with the requirements of procedural justice enshrined in article 6 § 1 ECHR. In other words, never again will the CAS be the same, as it will have to become a proper court. Surely, the ECtHR betrayed its good intentions by denying the undeniable lack of independence of the CAS. Yet, this duty will be left to the German judges in Karlsruhe or to the Grand Chamber of the ECtHR if, as you would expect from Pechstein, she decides to appeal the decision. In this regard, the rigorously argued dissent will prove a strong basis to put a final nail in the coffin of CAS’s current institutional structure.

To conclude, after seemingly winning this case, the CAS will have to undergo a radical change. The new CAS will be open to the public (both hearings and awards), it will need to shore up its independence from the SGBs if it desires to fends off future challenges based on the dissent, and more generally it will have to ensure that all of its procedures are rigorously kept in line with the constantly evolving jurisprudence of the ECtHR on article 6 §1 ECHR. The CAS can embrace these changes or wait for diligent lawyers to drag its awards through national courts in Europe, which will not be as timid as before in assessing the compatibility of CAS procedures with the ECHR. Nonetheless, there is also a lot to celebrate in this judgment for those, like me, who believe that the CAS is a necessary institution. It is now fully recognised as a judicial body sui generis, which is more than the emanation of the parties to a dispute. In fact, it is officially and finally recognised as the Supreme Court of World Sport, but with great powers comes also great responsibility…

[1] You will find many references to these debates in Duval, Antoine, Not in My Name! Claudia Pechstein and the Post-Consensual Foundations of the Court of Arbitration for Sport (February 20, 2017). Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law & International Law (MPIL) Research Paper No. 2017-01.

Editor's note: Prof. Thomas Kruessmann is key expert in the EU Technical Assistant Project "Strengthening Teaching and Research Capacity at ADA University" in Baku (Azerbaijan). At the same time, he is co-ordinator of the Jean-Monnet Network "Developing European Studies in the Caucasus" with Skytte Institute of Political Studies at the University of Tartu (Estonia).

The notion that “fish rots from the head down” is known to many cultures and serves as a practical reminder on what is at stake in the current wave of anti-corruption / integrity and good governance initiatives. The purpose of this blog post is to provide a short update on the recent founding of the International Partnership against Corruption in Sport (IPACS), intermittently known as the International Sports Integrity Partnership (IPAS), and to propose some critical perspectives from a legal scholar’s point of view.

During the past couple of years, the sports world has seen a never-ending wave of corruption allegations, often followed by revelations, incriminations and new allegation. There are ongoing investigations, most notably in the United States where the U.S. Department of Justice has just recently intensified its probe into corruption at the major sports governing bodies (SGBs). By all accounts, we are witnessing only the tip of the iceberg. And after ten years of debate and half-hearted reforms, there is the widespread notion, as expressed by the Council of Europe’s (CoE’s) Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) Resolution 2199/2018 that “the sports movement cannot be left to resolve its failures alone”.

What is IPACS and why has it been created? 

IPACS was founded under the authority of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) as “a cross-sectorial, multi-stakeholder platform to enable a pragmatic partnership allowing the development and implementation of programmes and initiatives by the various partners, to strengthen efforts promoting transparency, integrity and good governance in sports organisations, in particular through education and awareness-raising initiatives.” These words, taken from the Declaration of the Second International Forum for Sports Integrity (IFSI), held in Lausanne on 15 February 2017, provide a summary of the tasks IPACS was agreed to address. Interestingly, later on the official mission statement was significantly watered down: “To bring together international sports organisations, governments, inter-governmental organisations and other relevant stakeholders to strengthen and support efforts to eliminate corruption and promote a culture of good governance in and around sport.” This change mission statement betrays some of the controversies that lie behind the difficult quest for good governance and integrity.

One obvious question is why was it only in 2017 that IPACS was created? The short answer is that IFSI took up an idea that had been put forward at the UK Anti-Corruption Summit one year earlier. However, the real question is, why did this initiative emerge only in 2016/17 after corruption scandals had been hitting SGBs over the entire past decade and had become particularly acute with FIFA around 2010? The reason is that there is a major undercurrent in fighting corruption in SGBs: the doctrine of the autonomy of sports. For historical reasons, most major SGBs have been created as private entities, often associations or non-commercial entities, and are adamant at defending the notion of independence and autonomy of sports. While international anti-corruption conventions by the nature of international law address only states, SGBs are in the fortunate position to have to comply only with the criminal laws of their host state. And despite the fact that the commercialisation of sports has turned SGBs into multi-billion dollar ventures, since their inception their internal structures have resembled “gentlemen’s clubs”. It therefore comes as no surprise that even in the IFSI Declaration of February 2017, participants are eager to refer to the 69^th United Nations General Assembly proclaiming the autonomy of sports and shifting the responsibility in fighting corruption primarily to governments.

This undercurrent explains why the original IPACS mission statement calls for a “pragmatic partnership” and emphasizes education and awareness-raising initiatives. The truth is that even by 2017, many stakeholders (“participants to the IFSI Declaration”) were fighting to protect the independence of SGBs teeth and claw. And that only now a consensus is emerging, as expressed in the CoE PACE Resolution 2199/2018, that “enough is enough” and that SGBs have actually failed in cleaning up their business. Earlier resolutions, e.g. by the 14^th CoE Conference of Ministers responsible for Sport from 22 February 2017, have been more diplomatic in language. But it is clear that IPACS, despite all defensive battles from SGBs, is now representing a change in the tide of governments and anti-corruption related international organisations (such as CoE, OECD and UNODC) finally eager “to talk tough” with SGBs.

Is “talking tough” with SGBs credible? 

Now, even if we assume that the most recent investigations into corruption scandals were the straw that broke the camel’s back, will international anti-corruption organisations and governments be credible in fighting corruption by breaking up the doctrine of sports autonomy? Switzerland has been in the vanguard of national governments extending the offense of corruption in the private sector to NGOs and other non-commercial entities. This new offense (Arts 322^octies – 322^decies Swiss Criminal Code) is innovative because it does no longer require a distortion of the market. GRECO is reported to be preparing a “Typology Study on Private Sector Corruption” which will also cover the sports sector.

International anti-corruption organisations, by contrast, have a more careful line to tread. Arguably, there is a host of integrity-related problems in the world of sports that has been viewed for a long time in a reductionist way. Doping, match-rigging and other kinds of manipulation of sports events have ever too often been seen independently of the governance regimes of SGBs. Looking at them as individual wrongdoing at best supported the argument that SGBs may not have been vigilant enough. But this never came close to insisting that such kinds of wrongdoing are the logical consequence of structural governance defects in these bodies. As IPACS is now marking a shift in the consensus towards a more holistic and interventionist approach, what will this mean for international anti-corruption organisations? The problem is that during the past decade, many of them were only too happy to focus on singular problems while being co-opted by SGBs into “partnerships” to “address” governance issues. Analytically, this can be described as a horizontal legitimacy-building strategy by SGBs. By concluding memoranda of understanding, e.g. between the IOC and the UN or between FIFA and the CoE, SGBs, depending on their level of regional or universal activities, co-opted their potential critics and tried to acquire legitimacy by involving them into so-called reform processes.

Arguably, by being drawn into piecemeal reforms of SGBs over the last decade, international anti-corruption organisations have become part of the problem. The question is, how can they become part of the solution again? This is where IPACS presents an answer: it can be understood as a tacit dissolution of the prevailing partnerships and, depending on style and substance, offering a fresh start for a holistic and thus governance-related approach to establishing integrity. 

How is IPACS going about its work?

As mentioned before, IPACS was created in the wings of the Second IFSI, held on 15 February 2017 in Lausanne, and it will operate within the broader IFSI structure. By 2019 when the Third IFSI is scheduled, IFSI participants will therefore review a progress report on the activities realized which invariably includes any progress made by IPACS.

The work of IPACS itself is structured on three levels. There is a core group in which the most important anti-corruption international organisations are represented, a Working Group which is basically a tripartite structure representing the interests of SGBs, governments and inter-governmental organisations, and topical task forces. Core group members (CoE, IOC, OECD, UNODC and the UK Government) are in charge of preparing and co-ordinating the Working Group meetings. The first Working Group meeting took place at the CoE’s venue on 21 June 2017, the second Working Group meeting was held at the OECD on 14-15 December 2017. The third Working Group meeting is scheduled for June 2018 at the IOC’s headquarters in Lausanne.

So far, three task forces with experts from outside the Working Group have been established:

• Task force 1 (TF1) on reducing the risk of corruption in public procurement;
• Task force 2 (TF2) on ensuring transparency and integrity in the selection of major sport events, with an initial focus on managing conflicts of interest; and
• Task force 3 (TF3) on optimising the processes of compliance with good governance principles to mitigate the risk of corruption.

The expected outputs from these task forces are as follows:

(1) TF1 to develop by the end of 2018 a general mapping of procurement standards to the specific context of sport, possibly complemented by illustrative case studies on how these standards could be applied in practice.

(2) TF2 to define conflict of interest in the specific sports context and undertake a stock-taking exercise of procedures and practices for managing conflict of interest in the specific context of the selection of major sporting events.

(3) TF3 “to aim to”

• map relevant governance standards and their applicability to the sports context;
• consider developing indicators to evaluate compliance with these standards;
• consider means for building capacity to implement good governance standards.

From the wording it appears that from TF1 to TF3, the tasks get ever larger and the commitment ever more unspecific. While TF1 is given a precise task with a definitive deadline, TF3 is asked to “aim to” reach certain goals. But this specific wording is perhaps a correct reflection of the difference in the scope of the problem. Procurement standards can easily be adopted from the corporate world. There is no specific challenge in running procurement for SGBs. Conflicts of interest, in particular when selecting major sports events, are of a different magnitude. Very often, the traditional ways of addressing such conflicts in the corporate setting or in public administration are clear-cut and addressed in a number of regulations. In SGBs which have been traditionally considered as “gentlemen’s clubs”, conflicts of interest run through the entire fabric of the institution. Therefore, the magnitude is much larger. But the real issue is how shall the mandate of TF2 be distinguished from that of TF3? Conflicts of interest and bad governance are twin concepts, and both flourish in the same environment. So, let us now turn to the central question: what can be expected from the most crucial TF3 in the IPACS setting?

Do governance standards finally get applied? 

In its first set of assignments, TF3 is asked to look into “relevant” governance standards, map them and analyse their applicability to the sports context. What sounds like a logical sequence of steps is actually quite muddled. Judging what is relevant and what is not is certainly the task at hand, but if we assume that “relevant standards” have been found, why is it necessary in a second step to “analyse their applicability in the sports context”? Is not applicability in the sports context the key criterion for judging what is relevant and what is not? Or will there first be other criteria for judging relevance outside from applicability in the sports context?

The point here is not to ridicule the language of the task force assignment, but to point to a deeper problem. Over the entire past decade, there have been numerous projects seeking to identify relevant governance standards. Without going into this issue very deeply, let me name just the most important ones:

• IOC Basic Universal Principles of Good Governance of the Olympic and Sports Movement of 11/12 February 2008;
• IOC 2016 Code of Ethics;
• CoE Committee of Ministers Rec(2005)8 “On the Principles of Good Governance in Sport”;
• CoE PACE Resolution 1875 (2012) “Good Governance and Ethics in Sport” with appendix “Guidelines on good governance and ethics in sport”;
• CoE PACE Resolution 2053(2015) “The Reform of Football Governance”;
• CoE PACE Resolution 2199 (2018) “Working Towards a Framework for Modern Sports Governance” plus appendix;
• CoE PACE Resolution 2020 (2018) “Good Football Governance”;
• EPAS Study “A Review of Good Governance Principles and Indicators in Sport” (2016);
• EU Expert Group’s “Principles of Good Governance in Sport”;
• Sport Integrity Global Alliance’s (SIGA’s) “Good Governance Universal Standards Implementation Guidelines”.

In addition, when it comes the second set of assignments to TF3, in particular “developing indicators to evaluate compliance with these standards”, the following benchmarking tools already exist:

• EU’s Sports Governance Observer;
• EU’s “Support the Implementation of Good Governance in Sport” (SIGGS) project;
• and finally, the aforementioned Sport Integrity Global Alliance with a specific three-step benchmarking model.

So all things considered, a large amount of work has already been done to identify relevant standards for SGBs. Would it not simply be enough to take these project results seriously and start implementing them and evaluate their effects? Indeed, from an outside observer’s point of view, it looks as if this entire process is flawed. There is simply no need to go into another round of identifying standards, assessing their relevance and benchmarking them with indicators when all the work has already been done.

One argument to support the TF3 engagement is that there are simply too many different standards, and that, when it comes to governments intervening with SGBs and forcing them to adopt good governance standards, there should be one agreed-upon set of standards for all cases. Likewise, CoE PACE Resolution 2199 (2018) “strongly calls for the development and implementation of a solid set of harmonised good governance criteria” (italics not in the original). And in para 4 of the appendix to this Resolution, PACE even speaks of the necessity of identifying “core criteria” of good governance in sport. While such quest for harmonising and reducing to core elements may be intellectually stimulating, there is doubt whether the sports world can accept another round of soul-searching. The fish has already been rotting for a while, and the same “brave men” (aka experts) who had been dealing with the issue for a decade are now employed again in yet another attempt of the international community to clear up the mess of SGBs. We will eagerly await some results when the IPACS Working Group will convene for its next meeting in June 2018.