La funzione sociale dello sport tra specificità e principi comunitari

The paper reviews the exhaustive texts of doctrine and case law in order to track down the historical trail followed by the sport to build up its own, autonomous juridical dimension in Italy and European Union. Starting from the late insertion of the sport in the Italian Constitution, the authors come to examine in useful and effective detail the evolution of the European case law in the sports’ matters, which have prompted the inevitable though shy, not binding acts of the political EU institutions in the last 25 years. The concept of sport’s specificity, finally built in the EU treaty, is analyzed in depth in view of defining the peculiar nature of the sports’ activities, even when they become economic activities. Finally, the paper has the merit to assess the evolving EU case law when it comes to overcome the distinction between the sports rules and the technical sports rules, whenever they apply to economic activities as well as when it applies the general interest exemption from the competition rules to the sports activities, leaving aside the call for the more classic sports specificity as sporting exception