Greece shuns EU rules in rush for lottery tax revenue

Greek lucrative state lottery, OPAP, has been in limbo as a draft law is yet to be approved. The country's parliament is expected to pass the draft law to get its hands on tax revenue from the state lottery despite a warning from the European Commission that the bill infringes competition laws.

Sources who wish to remain anonymous claim that the Greek parliament's upcoming agenda includes a vote on the draft law, which has been conveniently tucked into an omnibus bill scheduled for approval from 5-8 August.

The news comes before a critical summit in Brussels (last 21 July), when eurozone leaders plan to finalise the terms of a second bailout for Greece, expected to be around 115 billion euros.

Greece battling to raise revenue
Greece is battling to raise revenue from the privatisation scheme before a team of experts from the European Central Bank, the European Commission and the International Monetary Fund descend on Athens on 16 August to check the country is doing enough to soften its debt burden.

But efforts to rush through a draft gambling law could risk EU infringement procedures later on down the line. In a letter to OPAP just two weeks ago, the European Commission complained that many aspects of the draft gambling law ran counter to EU antitrust laws.
In particular, the Commission pointed to requirements that betting companies are registered in Greece, only use Greek bank accounts and only use servers located in Greece as anti-competitive.

The parliamentarians' timeline has been tightened as they rush to make the state lottery more attractive for investors to rescue the euro zone's most indebted country from defaulting. Greece's stake in OPAP is worth about 1.5 billion euros. "No serious investor will put 1.5 billion euros on the table if they do not know what the commercial environment is," the anonymous source explained.

The Greek finance minister, Evangelos Venizelos, told his parliament that he had appealed to Olli Rehn, the EU commissioner for economic affairs, to help him speed up the approval of the draft bill. Commission staff could not be contacted by EurActiv during the summer lull but sources close to the Commission indicate that Rehn has not yet agreed to Venizelos' appeals.
Greece is under immense pressure from the IMF and the EU to raise 1.7 billion euros in privatisation revenues by September and 5 billion euros by the end of 2011.

"OPAP is critical for the first wave of privatisations in September and the second one in December and we must finalise strengthening OPAP in many ways, such as by extending the licence it currently holds," Venizelos told the Greek parliament on Tuesday (19 July).
Greece has traditionally set its sights against betting with a controversial ban on slot machines and online gambling. The draft law would raise both of these bans. Competitors argue that gambling restrictions in Greece are not born out of moral conviction but an attempt to retain OPAP's state monopoly.

If the Greek parliament manages to pass the critical law then OPAP will be able to buy 15,000 slot machines from the government, providing much-needed revenue to appease international pressure.