German state to abolish its online gambling law 

This week, Schleswig-Holstein Prime Minister Torsten Albig, announced that his cabinet is extensively working on repelling the online gambling law of the province that was adopted by the previous government last year.

The Prime Minister indicated that he intends to align his state with the German federal gambling treaty. This move is surprising because just recently Schleswig-Holstein awarded seven new online gambling licenses to offshore operators.

The German federal online gambling treaty was adopted by 15 out of the 16 German provinces on July 1st 2012. The new treaty liberalizes the online sports betting market but only awards 20 licenses to the top 20 bidders in the licensing process.

Online casino and online poker licenses under the new German legislation cannot be awarded in order to protect the interests of the German state-owned online gambling monopoly. This treaty was heavily criticized by the European Commission that claims that it's against core EU principles.

Last year, when the other German states were preparing this treaty, the government of Schleswig Holstein decided to break away and adopted its own gambling law. The Schleswig-Holstein gambling law was much praised by the EC because it was in conformity with EU legislation.

Earlier this year the government of Schleswig-Holstein that has adopted the above mentioned law was defeated during the elections and the party that came into power admitted since the very beginning that it will try to repel the online gambling laws adopted in 2011.