BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union’s top court ruled Friday that some decisions by international governing bodies, such as FIFA and the International Olympic Committee, can be challenged outside Switzerland, opening up a system that currently binds athletes, officials and clubs to accept verdicts there.
A statement from the European Court of Justice said that tribunals in the 27 EU member states “must be able to carry out an in-depth review of those awards for consistency with the fundamental rules of EU law.”
The ECJ ruling in Luxembourg means that EU national courts should be able to review verdicts from the Swiss-based Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). Switzerland is not a member of the European Union.
“The awards made by the CAS must be amenable to effective judicial review," the statement said. It said that “national courts or tribunals must be empowered to carry out ... an in-depth judicial review” to ensure that CAS rulings "are consistent with EU public policy.”
CAS director general Matthieu Reeb said the court's decision limited the review of CAS rulings by EU courts to matters of EU public policy.
"In service to the international sports community, CAS will continue to provide timely and expert dispute resolution worldwide,” he said in a statement.
There was no immediate comment from world soccer governing body FIFA and the IOC.
The decision came after a decade-long legal fight by Belgian soccer club RFC Seraing and Maltese investment fund Doyen Sports, which led to the ruling Friday. They opposed FIFA rules prohibiting third-party ownership of a player’s registration and transfer rights, and in 2015 asked a commercial court in Brussels to review if those rules breached EU law. The ECJ did not specifically rule on third-party ownership as such, only the scope of CAS decisions.
Seraing’s lawyer, Jean-Louis Dupont, said the club should be compensated after FIFA imposed sanctions including transfer bans and a fine. He added that the ruling has wide implications, challenging the legality of all “forced arbitrations” by mandated international sports federations.
“In summary, the (court) has definitively ended the procedural deception used by international sports federations to evade the proper application of EU law through the imposition of compulsory arbitration outside the EU,” said Dupont, who also helped win the landmark Bosman case on the contractual freedom of players 30 years ago.
The Court of Arbitration for Sport was created in 1984 to give sports a unified and binding legal forum for settling disputes and appeals based in the IOC's home city of Lausanne, Switzerland. It is the mandatory path for athletes to challenge disciplinary and appeal judgments by Olympic sports federations. It rules on cases across dozens of sports and is a key authority in doping cases.
Soccer is by far the biggest client in the CAS caseload of about 950 registered each year. FIFA’s contribution of 2.5 million Swiss francs ($2.75 million) to CAS in 2023 was more than 10% of the court’s revenue that year.
CAS verdicts can be challenged at Switzerland’s supreme court in Lausanne on limited procedural grounds and are rarely overturned. Seraing and Doyen lost at the Swiss Federal Tribunal in 2018.
The ECJ said any CAS decision that binds other courts or tribunals from acting “are contrary to EU law.”
The ruling marks a new legal blow to the authority of sports bodies in Switzerland.
The same European court in Luxembourg has handed down two other major rulings in the last two years under EU competition law — in the Super League case and Lassana Diarra transfer dispute — that challenged the authority of soccer bodies FIFA and UEFA.
Petrequin reported from Paris.
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FILE -The headquarters of FIFA is photographed after a meeting of the FIFA Executive Committee in Zurich, Switzerland, Sept. 25, 2015. (AP Photo/Michael Probst, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. forces in the Caribbean Sea have seized another sanctioned oil tanker that the Trump administration says has ties to Venezuela, part of a broader U.S. effort to take control of the South American country’s oil.
The U.S. Coast Guard boarded the tanker, named Veronica, early Thursday, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem wrote on social media. The ship had previously passed through Venezuelan waters and was operating in defiance of President Donald Trump’s "established quarantine of sanctioned vessels in the Caribbean,” she said.
U.S. Southern Command said Marines and sailors launched from the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford to take part in the operation alongside a Coast Guard tactical team, which Noem said conducted the boarding as in previous raids. The military said the ship was seized “without incident.”
Several U.S. government social media accounts posted brief videos that appeared to show various parts of the ship’s capture. Black-and-white footage showed at least four helicopters approaching the ship before hovering over the deck while armed troops dropped down by rope. At least nine people could be seen on the deck of the ship.
The Veronica is the sixth sanctioned tanker seized by U.S. forces as part of the effort by Trump’s administration to control the production, refining and global distribution of Venezuela’s oil products and the fourth since the U.S. ouster of Venezuela President Nicolás Maduro in a surprise nighttime raid almost two weeks ago.
The Veronica last transmitted its location on Jan. 3 as being at anchor off the coast of Aruba, just north of Venezuela’s main oil terminal. According to the data it transmitted at the time, the ship was partially filled with crude.
Days later, the Veronica became one of at least 16 tankers that left the Venezuelan coast in contravention of the quarantine that U.S. forces have set up to block sanctioned ships, according to Samir Madani, the co-founder of TankerTrackers.com. He said his organization used satellite imagery and surface-level photos to document the ship movements.
The ship is currently listed as flying the flag of Guyana and is considered part of the shadow fleet that moves cargoes of oil in violation of U.S. sanctions.
According to its registration data, the ship also has been known as the Gallileo, owned and managed by a company in Russia. In addition, a tanker with the same registration number previously sailed under the name Pegas and was sanctioned by the Treasury Department for being associated with a Russian company moving cargoes of illicit oil.
As with prior posts about such raids, Noem and the military framed the seizure as part of an effort to enforce the law. Noem argued that the multiple captures show that “there is no outrunning or escaping American justice.”
Speaking to reporters at the White House later Thursday, Noem declined to say how many sanctioned oil tankers the U.S. is tracking or whether the government is keeping tabs on freighters beyond the Caribbean Sea.
“I can’t speak to the specifics of the operation, although we are watching the entire shadow fleet and how they’re moving,” she told reporters.
But other officials in Trump's Republican administration have made clear they see the actions as a way to generate cash as they seek to rebuild Venezuela’s battered oil industry and restore its economy.
Trump met with executives from oil companies last week to discuss his goal of investing $100 billion in Venezuela to repair and upgrade its oil production and distribution. His administration has said it expects to sell at least 30 million to 50 million barrels of sanctioned Venezuelan oil.
Associated Press writer Ben Finley contributed to this report.
This story has been corrected to show the Veronica is the fourth, not the third, tanker seized by U.S. forces since Maduro’s capture and the ship also has been known as the Gallileo, not the Galileo.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem speaks with reporters at the White House, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem speaks with reporters at the White House, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem speaks with reporters at the White House, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem speaks with reporters at the White House, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem speaks with reporters at the White House, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem speaks during a press conference, Thursday, Jan. 8, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem speaks at a news conference at Harry Reid International Airport, Nov. 22, 2025, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/Ronda Churchill, File)
