Calls on the Commission to encourage measures by sports organisations to protect young sportsmen and sportswomen, with due respect for the specificity of sport, by openly expressing itself in favour of stricter application of the FIFA regulations banning transfers of players aged under 16 within the EU and endorsing the principle that players should sign their first professional contract with the club which has trained them;

37. Calls on the Commission to encourage measures by sports organisations to protect young sportsmen and sportswomen, with due respect for the specificity of sport, by openly expressing itself in favour of stricter application of the FIFA regulations banning transfers of players aged under 16 within the EU and endorsing the principle that players should sign their first professional contract with the club which has trained them;

They are still in training, as it were. What guarantees do we have that they will grow into first-class players in the league of the internal market?

'Rules of a sporting federation under which a basketball club is prohibited from playing a professional basketball player who is a national of a Member State in a match (for the first time) if he was engaged only after a specified transfer date may be justified on sporting grounds in the public interest, and are therefore compatible with Article 48 of the EC Treaty (now Article 39), if that date is chosen, for professional sportsmen who have previously played for clubs in other Member States, in such a way that the competitions are not distorted and in particular that the comparability of results of such a competition is not affected by ...[+++]transfers of players which take place before the transfer deadline, and if the period is no shorter than that for professional sportsmen who have played in non-member countries'.

From the 1992-93 football season, the national associations coming under UEFA (Union of European Football Associations) will have to allow at least three non-national players plus two non-national players who have, by that date, been playing uninterrupted in the country concerned for five years, including three years spent in youth teams, to be in the line-up for domestic first division championship matches.

Premier League representatives said that they shared the Commission's view that no nationality clauses can be applied to EU professional football players in either national or European club competitions and that no fees can be applied to cross border transfers of EU professional football players at the end of their contract.