Contractual status of athletes in the Republic of Serbia

Abstract

One may argue that legal position of athletes is free from controversies, since their legal status is usually specifically regulated by the acts dealing with sports. In the Republic of Serbia, Law on Sport regulates legal status of athletes, specifically drawing the line between amateur athletes and professional athletes. While the legal status of professional athletes is comparable to the ones that employees have in accordance with the labour law (with the necessary adaptability to the “sport as a labour” that bring a number of rights and obligations primarily regulated by the Law on Sports as a lex specialis to the Labor Law), contracts that amateur athletes conclude may defer. First of them is the contract of practicing sports and the second one is the contract on scholarship of a juvenile athlete for sports improvement. In the paper, the authors discuss the negative consequences on the legal position of athletes set up by the contracts that amateur athletes conclude in order to give de lege ferenda solutions.