Reform of sports justice on penalties rejected by the legal offices of Dagl-Corriere.it

Sports justice turns out to be a more complicated matter even than the offices of the Minister of Sport Andrea Abodi had foreseen. As widely predictable, in fact, as soon as the legislative office, the Dagl (Department of Legal and Legislative Affairs of the Presidency of the Council) analyzed the text of the reform provision that was to be included in the decree law that the government wanted to approve tomorrow, the had to immediately block. Beyond the merits of the proposal (which we will see later) the first reason is almost trivial: yesdamages the autonomy of the sporting system. It is quite incredible that it has not been considered, since it is a basic principle (the IOC strongly sanctions any interference by the state in sport) reaffirmed by numerous pronouncements of all levels (up to the Court of Human Rights) , so much so that administrative justice cannot intervene in removing penalties or restoring championships.

The Ministry of Sport is not a body that is hierarchically above CONI. It necessarily deals with something else, it cannot intervene in the rewriting of the code of a private justice, which only binds people who have accepted it, when, without being forced, they have come together to carry out an activity. It is as if the State were rewriting the contract that I sign with another private individual.

But how they wanted to change sports justice? The goal, as we know, was to avoid other Juventus cases, with the ranking changed several times during the season. The first proposal was to start all the trials in June, so if, for example, there was a scandal, let’s say an arrest of a president, in September, his team would be allowed to finish the championship before starting the proceeding in June (and maybe, at that point, removing the Scudetto or the places in the Champions League won in the meantime). A far too long wait. The idea then was to enforce the sentences (then inflict penalty points) only when it becomes final, therefore after the pronouncement of the guarantee panel: which in any case would not have guaranteed not to have revisions, because, as we saw in the Juve case, the panel can always refer it to the Court of Appeal. In any case, we didn’t even enter into the merits, but we stopped much earlier: it is not the State that can reform sports justice. So for now everything has been removed.