"Sport Governance and European Integration"

This paper is concerned with the issue of interaction between Sport governance, performed by private sporting authorities at the national and trans-national levels, and the dynamics of European integration promoted by the Community institutions. The object of the paper is going to be the functioning of the decision-making mechanism in the European Union (EU) in a specific case study, namely the Sport regulation. A special attention is given to the role played by the European Court of Justice (ECJ), in connection with other EU institutions, in the making of the regulatory framework to apply to the Sport field. This paper will try to make a contribution to the discussion, initiated before the Maastricht Treaty, about the likely process of re-politicization of the integration process, which was expected to happen as a consequence of this highly significant step. The period taken in consideration stretches from the Bosman ruling, December 1995, to the Nice Treaty, December 2000