Brussels, 24/03/2011 (Agence Europe) - How should the European Union intervene in the rules on online gambling, which vary enormously from one member state to the next? This is the question that the European Commission is asking stakeholders in its Green Paper on online gambling, published on Thursday 24 March 2011.
This consultation exercise has been long awaited by the Council of Ministers and the EP and will run until 31 August 2011 in order to draw up an objective balance sheet of the online gambling world before deciding what action to take. The business is mushrooming, says the Commission, generating more than €6 billion in profit in the EU in 2008 and accounting for 7.5% of total gambling profits. This might double by 2013, according to the Commission's estimates.
There are a number of issues, ranging from the opening of markets (some member states ban all online gambling, while others allow it subject to certain rules) and problems like different licensing systems, sales and marketing and illegal gambling. A massive international illegal gambling market has opened up, explains the Commission, with unlicensed operators and a secondary market of licensed operators operating in countries not covered by their licences. The way the industry has taken off has raised consumer protection issues (encouraging addiction to gambling, particularly among children) and public order issues due to fraud and money-laundering. The Commission says that some of the profits should be given to charity or used for work in the public interest.
The Commission covers these issues in 51 questions but takes a prudent approach because, as EU Internal Market Commissioner Michel Barnier explains in a press release, the consultation process does not aim at market liberalisation but rather to ensure the online gambling market is properly regulated for everyone in the EU. This caution has disappointed operators like EGBA, which had tried to get gambling included in the Services Directive and which expressed concern about the Green Paper on Thursday 24 March 2011. It says in a press release that the Green Paper lacks commitment to prevent greater segmentation of the market and the Commission is silent about the need for binding rules in the EU to combat the increasing fragmentation of the market due to bans and restrictions in the member states that are applied without any coordination.
EGBA says the Commission should focus more on national licence systems that impose such restrictions on service providers that a black, unlicensed market operates in the EU to the detriment of gamblers. The EGBA says the Commission should continue with the infringement proceedings it launched against a number of member states before publishing the Green Paper.
On Thursday, the French online company federation, FJEJEL, welcomed the Green Paper's open-mindedness and the fact the Green Paper says it is up to each member state to make use of the subsidiarity principle to decide on its own gambling rules. (S.P./trans.fl)