European Parliament again rejects cross-border offers on online gambling

The EP position expressed last week that is deemed to be of great political importance as to the indications it will give to the European Commission on the follow-up to the latter’s Green Paper on online gambling published in March. The EP and the Council (Member States) would have to approve any legislative follow-up proposal from the Commission.
European state lotteries (The European Lotteries, EL) welcome the European Parliament’s rejection of cross-border online gambling offers provided by hundreds of companies operating from Malta and Gibraltar and pursuing purely commercial interests.
 
EL president Friedrich Stickler: “We welcome the European Parliament’s measured approach on potential supportive EU action and its insistence on law enforcement. We particularly welcome the demand that online gambling companies violating the laws of one Member State should lose their licences in other Member States.”

 Key statements in the draft resolution are:

•    Online gambling operators must respect the national laws of each Member State and need a national licence to offer their services to citizens of that Member State (para. 6c)

•    Member States can exclude all illegal providers from market access and draw on a wide variety of repressive measures; a gambling company should only be able to operate in a Member State if it does not operate in contravention of the law in any other EU Member State (para. 6c, 11a)

•   Legal gambling offerings must be attractive to ensure that consumers do not use operators which do not fulfill national licensing requirements (para. 4)

•   The EP recognises the Member States’ discretion in determining how gambling is organised: total or partial bans, monopolies or licensing systems (para. 6, 7)

•   The EP rejects the application of the mutual recognition principle (para. 7)

•   Gambling monopolies under strict government control may ensure consumer protection and the fight against crime more effectively than competition in the market (para. 6a)

•   The EP rejects any European legislative act uniformly regulating the entire gambling sector, but takes the view that, in some areas there would be clear added value from a coordinated European approach in addition to national regulation; asks the Commission to explore all possible measures at the EU level (closer coordination between the Member States, framework directive, etc) (para. 5)

•    The EP reminds the Commission once again of the importance of lottery funding for sports and good causes and urges it to propose measures to secure this societal function (para. 17b)

The committee rejected amendments calling for a pan-European licensing system and mutual recognition, amongst many others.
 
The European Parliament’s vote in plenary is scheduled for the week of 14 November. This final vote is expected to lead to no substantial changes to the text of the draft resolution adopted by the lead committee today, considering that the three largest and some smaller political groups supported 19 compromises on the key issues which they had negotiated in advance of today’s vote.