France, Italy and Spain were early rebels
With no consensus about online gaming regulations among the European Union’s member states, a shared regulatory framework is probably impossible, EU Commissioner Harrie Temmink told delegates at the International Casino Conference in London earlier this month.
Temmink, who is chairman of the EU’s Expert Group on Gambling Services, said any plan to develop a blanket regulatory structure would not survive. “I can assure you that if we proposed legislation on gambling, in the first meeting with the council, we would have 26 out of 28 member states that would be fiercely opposed to the proposal,” he said. “It would be suicide.”
The concept was embraced in 2011, when former Internal Market and Services Commissioner Michel Barnier proposed EU-wide regulations to “protect consumers, prevent fraud, and maintain the integrity of online sports betting,” reported the Poker News Report. At the time, it was widely thought that “the prevailing regulatory, societal and issues in the EU could not be tackled adequately by member states individually.”
But three of those member states—France, Spain and Italy—were not persuaded by Barnier’s plan, and created their own ring-fenced markets, in spite its conflict with the EU´s free trade philosophy.
Casino.org compares the skirmish to states-rights issues in the U.S., in which individual states have battled the federal government for the right to control of iGaming.
Temmink says a collaborative plan is out for the foreseeable future. “The commission is not proposing it and will not propose it, not in my lifetime or the next,” he said.
“Operators need to have a license for the specific country in which they offer games, without being able to count on the recognition of licenses between one European country and another,” said Temmink. “For their part, the member states (must) ensure a non-discriminatory system of issuing permits.”
