Martin Polaine was invited to speak at the Middle East Law Conference on Sport and Arbitration. The conference was aimed at practitioners and law officers from the MENA region and had as its main focus, arbitration and alternative dispute resolution in the Middle East. Martin addressed the likely issues and challenges to be faced by Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) following the final disposal by Germany's highest Civil Court of the Claudia Pechstein case.
Martin emphasised that there is likely to be continuing scrutiny of the fairness of CAS proceedings on a case by case basis, even though there is unlikely to be scope for challenging the nature of the proceedings themselves nor the tribunal's composition rules. Martin also drew attention to the recent decision by, again, the same court in Germany in the case of the lower league club, Wilhelmshaven, in which an earlier CAS hearing had failed to take proper account of Treaty of the European Union provisions. Martin suggested that CAS will need to take closer account of national and international law going forward and that it will be an intriguing prospect to see whether the traditional or deferential approach by national courts to CAS decisions prevails. A copy of Martin's presentation will be made available shortly.