Assignment Week III

Jos Cavaco
11115661
University of Amsterdam

The evolution of Sports Law in Portugal

The first Portuguese legislation relevant to sport which structured the
sports system dates from 1932, followed by the subsequent legislation (1943) which introduced the
regulations governing the General Directorate of Physical Education, Sport and School Health,
despite accepting payment in order to enjoy sport as a pleasure, that new legislation made
no mention of professional sport at that time.
It was only in 1960 the first time that professional sport was referred to in a law. The legislator
admitted the existence of a sport career and considered that it could be a labour activity. Even if it
was only considered about the most popular sports, known as sports of the masses, to those sports
in which practise was starting to show the inevitability of professional sport.
After the revolution of the 25th of April of 1974, some legislation started to talk about the real
professional sport and ethics of sport, such as violence and doping.
The inclusion of physical education and sport in the PCR was the starting line of a
process of a legal interventionism of the State in the field of sport.
Nowadays it is in force the Basic Sports Law of Physical Activity
and Sport, adopted in 2007, which was preceded by the Basic Law of the Sports
System, approved in 1990, and by the Basic Law of Sport, enacted in 2004.
The Basic Sports Law of Physical Activity and Sport in order to establish the general framework
of the sport system, and it intends to promote and offer guidance to the generalization of the
sportive activity. It contains several different topics that covers the different subsystems of the
Portuguese Sports System. This legislation also covers high professional and high performance
level sport's athletes.

Sport at the Portuguese Republic Constitution

Sport had been recognized by the first Portuguese Republic Constitution, dated from 1976, as a
fundamental right. It is expressed in the article 79, under the section dedicated to Rights, Freedom
and their Guarantees in the Title III which covers Economic, social and cultural right and duties.
Article 79 n1 stipulates a general right to physical culture and sport
as follows: Everyone shall possess the right to physical education and
sport. This means that all citizens are entitled to sport in its various
dimensions and scenarios, including school, recreation, high performance, amateurism;
professionalism, informal activities.
After the 1989 constitutional revision, the legislator included a second number in the same article,
stating that: Acting in cooperation with schools and sporting associations and groups, the state
shall be charged with promoting, stimulating, guiding and supporting the practice and dissemination
of physical culture and sport, and preventing violence in sport. Which means that the State does
not own the a centralized model that could solve all sport issues, instead the PCR
demands States intervention shall be developed necessarily in close collaboration with public and
private stakeholders, mainly schools, the sports

movement (private and autonomous sport governing bodies such as

clubs, associations and federations) and local authorities.
The PCR provides a decentralized model between private and public actors in the promotion of the
right to physical culture and sport.
State interventionism in sport is also evident in what regards to
financing.
In fact, the Portuguese sports financing is structured in a
model that relies primarily on public sources. Unfortunately, the existent legal and institutional
mechanisms created to stimulate other sources of revenue are still not sufficient to mitigate the high
dependency of the sports movement on public funds.

Sport and Government

The Government intervenes in sport through the work of the
Presidency of the Council of Ministers, namely by the Minister of the
Presidency which is supported by the Secretary of State for Youth and
Sport. The role of government in sport is to establish the basis upon
which all sports activities cab be developed in order to create
technical and material conditions for sport development.
There is more administrative organs that share competence with the field of sport, for example the
Portuguese Sport Institute that is responsible for supporting normal and high performance sport by
providing technical, financial and human resources.
There is also the National Sport Council that basically monitors the development of policies to
promote physical activity and sport, to recognize the professional nature of the competitions in each
sport, and also to give an opinion regarding legislation related to sport, when requested so to do by
the Government member responsible for sport.
The National Sport Council is the body responsible for the regulation, on a provisional basis, of
disputes that arise between the professional leagues and the corresponding sports federations,
namely conflicts regarding the number of clubs that take part in the professional sports competition,
the conditions governing access to professional and non-professional sports competitions and the
organization of the activities of national teams.
The Portuguese Anti-doping Authority is the national body to fight against doping in sport, and it is
also the responsible for implement the doping control procedure.

Non Governmental sport Organizations

There are several different non Governmental Sport Organizations that promote and supervise the
practice of sports, such as the sports clubs, the sports companies and the sport federations as well.
The first are private corporations whose aim
is the organization, promotion and supervision of the practice of sports activities through
membership. Being the second ones also private corporations that promotes sport events and
developing activities related to professional practice of each sport.
The sports federations are also private corporate bodies that integrate athletes and clubs, usually
described as non profit-making associations, aiming to represent their sport disciplines with the
international sport organizations as well as to ensure the competitive participations of the national
teams.

Professional Leagues
Professional leagues have personality and administrative, and technical and financial autonomy as
well. A professional league may be composed by the sports clubs and the sports companies that
compete on professional competitions.
It must regulate and organize the competitions of professional nature, and to respect the technical
rules defined by the relevant national or international federate organs, it also defines the sports
financial and organizational requirements of access to professional competitions, as well as to
supervise its execution by the participant entities of those competitions.

The Portuguese Court of Arbitration for Sport

The PCAS was born in the context of the previous model of justice seemed unable to offer an
adequate response to the problems and challenges posed by a new sporty order, strongly marked by
professionalism, and determined by the powerful economic interest gravitating around it. It is also
to be noted the exponential increase in litigation in this field.
Against this background, and given the increasingly pressing need to rethink the
sports justice system in order to make it compatible with the requirements of speed and
specialization, and rescue him much of the unwanted intrusion of state courts, such as the
dangers and shortcomings arising from a purely private justice. The legislature
advanced trend for a consensus solution, which resulted in
creation of a high judicial body dedicated to the settlement of disputes
from the sports system, which will place an intermediate point, which means that it does not works
exclusively under the jurisdiction of sports organization, or under the sphere of state's jurisdiction.
It should be noted that the establishment of this tribunal does not represent the elimination of the
internal sports courts. On the other hand, it comes up
a complementary logic on these, so preserving its important
role as the body of first instance of the sports system.
It also does not rule out definitively the possibility of intervention of the ordinary courts in
sporting nature of questions: because there is a set of materials comprising the
voluntary arbitration jurisdiction of the PCAS, which means that in these cases the intervention of
court is dependent on the willingness of the parties.