Sport, pregnancy, and fixed-term contracts: Is sports a blanket exception in labour law?

Sammanfattning: This thesis concerns the successive use of fixed-term contracts under Clause 5 of the Framework Agreement in the sector of sports and whether such usage provides protection from dismissal for pregnant workers. This was done by using a legal dogmatic method in the field of EU law. The paper starts with identifying the role of sports in EU labour law. It was held that sports have a special standing in EU law and have the ability to derogate from the scope of EU law if the activities are purely sports activities and not economic in nature which has been referred to as ‘the specificity of sports’ by scholars and the Court itself. In this regard, the paper provided an overview of the nature of sports work and the need for atypical contracts in the sector of sports. The thesis suggests that athletes are fixed-term workers, and that Member States have the ability to justify the use of successive fixed-term contracts under Clause 5 of the Framework Agreement. Considering that Clause 5 of the Framework Agreement leaves a lot of flexibility for the Member States, they nevertheless have a margin of discretion which may result in an unlimited use of successive fixed-term contracts. As such, there is a risk to circumvent fundamental labour rights which became even more complex in relation to the special protection for pregnant workers to not be dismissed from the start of the pregnancy until the end of maternity leave. The analysis shows that sports are indeed a unique industry that needs contracts that are atypical. This is because the employment conditions require flexibility. However, the successive use of fixed-term contracts in the specific sector of sport does not provide sufficient and effective protection of pregnant workers under EU law. In this regard, the thesis suggests strengthening the protection for workers by adopting a special protection approach for pregnant workers in line with the Pregnancy Directive.