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The Malta Football Association is liable to be in contravention of EU regulations as it prolongs its restriction on the number of foreign footballers a football team can field during games.
The MFA is holding on dearly to its minimum requirement for eight home-grown players that can be fielded during any given time in a football match. Whilst clubs are allowed unlimited registration of foreign footballers, only three non-Maltese nationals can be fielded during a football match, in turn even restricting the number of EU citizens in Maltese football.
The European Commission’s spokesperson for Employment and Social Affairs Commissioner Vladimir Splidla has however confirmed with MaltaToday that the regulation cannot limit the number of EU players within football teams who can play in any given football match, with a small exception for meetings between national teams.
“Even if the MFA is not the government, but a sports association, this regulation appears to infringe Community law as interpreted by the Court Justice in the Bosman ruling and subsequent judgements.
“The Commission is going, if necessary, to make inquiries before the national authorities in Malta in order to have some clarifications on the issue,” spokesperson Katharina von Schnurbein said, confirming statements by Simon Busuttil MEP that the MFA’s regulations are discriminatory.
According to Busuttil, who wrote about the issue in The Times, discrimination on the grounds of nationality in the case of EU footballers is illegal under EU law and what the MFA is doing by allowing unlimited registration of EU players and then denying them the right to play on the field during any given match, is still tantamount to discrimination.
Joe Mifsud, the president of the MFA, is committed to retain the association’s hold on the number of non-Maltese players that can be fielded on the pitch, and replied to Busuttil’s article in The Times. Mifsud believes that limiting the number of foreigners on the field will serve to safeguard Malta’s youth football sector.
Mifsud has already acknowledged that the MFA could have taken a risk in legislating the way it did, based as it is on the principle of the ‘specificity of sports’ within the EU Constitution. He believes that this should lead EU decision-makers “to draw a distinction between sports, even when it implies an economic activity, and other economic activities.”
According to Mifsud, the risk is “well taken” since such rules safeguard clubs’ regional identities and their link with the local community, forcing them to use their resources by training young footballers from the locale.
Citing the famous Bosman ruling, Busuttil said that in a recent opinion given by the European Court of Justice’s Advocate General on the free movement of workers “precludes the application of rules laid down by sports federations under which, in competition matches which they organise, sports clubs may field only a limited number of professional players who are nationals of other member states.”
Mifsud however has disagreed with Busuttil’s opinion, in which he said the MEP had taken “a very simplistic and a too dogmatic approach” by citing the 1995 Bosman ruling.
matthew@newsworksltd.com
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