In a resolution adopted on Monday 12 October, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe urged the European Union to quickly break the “ institutional deadlock” imposed by Malta over the definition of “illegal sports betting” in the Council of Europe Convention on the Manipulation of Sports Competition (the Magglingen Convention), a deadlock which prevents the Union and its Member States from signing and/or ratifying this text.
Highly dependent on gambling revenues, Malta is using this challenge to create a legal “deadlock” preventing the Convention from working with a maximum number of State Parties, the assembly denounced.
It hopes that the Presidency of the European Union will include ratification of the Magglingen Convention at the next meeting of the Committee of Permanent Representatives of the Member States (Coreper I) and that the European Parliament will commit itself to this.
To date, only three EU Member States - Italy, Greece and Portugal - have signed and ratified the Magglingen Convention. Twenty others have signed it, but have still not ratified it. (Original version in French by Véronique Leblanc)