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The European Court of Justice said on Friday national courts must be permitted to carry out detailed reviews of arbitral awards by the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

The ruling is potentially damaging for the authority of CAS, sport’s top court, whose awards are currently considered final and cannot be re-litigated, and the ruling could also have wide-reaching consequences for FIFA.

The ruling stemmed from a CAS judgement against Belgian club Seraing who were banned from registering new players and fined around 143,000 euros ($165,000) by FIFA in 2015.

FIFA ruled that Seraing had breached rules by selling the economic rights to four of its players to a Maltese fund, Doyen Sports.

World football’s governing body said third parties are not allowed to hold economic rights to players and the sanctions were upheld by CAS as well as the Swiss Supreme Court.

But Seraing took the case to the Belgian courts to challenge the compatibility of FIFA’s rules with EU law.

The Belgian court then approached the European Court of Justice, which ruled that the CAS’s decision was contrary to EU law.

‘It is essential that recourse to arbitration does not undermine the rights and freedoms that the fundamental rules of EU law guarantee athletes, clubs and, more broadly, any other person practising a professional sport or pursuing an economic activity linked to that sport,’ the European court said.

‘On those grounds, the Court of Justice rules today that the national courts or tribunals must be empowered to carry out... an in-depth judicial review as to whether arbitral awards made by the Court of Arbitration for Sport are consistent with EU public policy.’

The ruling brings into question the finality of CAS decisions when those decisions are based on arbitration clauses imposed by sporting bodies.

In response to the judgement, the International Council of Arbitration for Sport (ICAS), which is responsible for the funding of CAS, said in a statement that the court handled cases from all over the world and therefore ‘the vast majority of cases before CAS concern contractual and disciplinary issues not governed by EU law’.

ICAS added: ‘Matters related to EU competition law can already be challenged before EU state courts.’

Matthieu Reeb, CAS Director General, said: ‘In service to the international sports community, CAS will continue to provide timely and expert dispute resolution worldwide.’