As gambling activities are regarded as essentially national, the European Commission has never proposed any common rules for their regulation in Europe.
Meanwhile, both the European Parliament and the Council have taken non-legislative initiatives in recent months on this highly sensitive issue, which touches upon both taxation and state-owned monopolies.
In December last year, the French EU Presidency presented an overview of the legal framework and policies adopted in EU member states on gambling and betting, in view of initiating EU-level political discussion on related cross-border issues. Shortly after, the Parliament's internal market and consumer protection committee adopted, in February, an own-initiative report on the integrity of online gambling (EurActiv 16/02/09).
Once the Parliament adopts its report in plenary next week, the Commission will have received two political signals over the past three months urging it to act on the issue. "A smart listener will act accordingly," Finnish permanent representation counsellor Harri Syväsalmi told EurActiv.
A press officer for Commissioner Charlie McCreevy, the EU's internal market commissioner, told EurActiv that the only initiative related to gambling she knew of was "the next round of infringement cases".
Only way forward is political
In a debate on the future of gambling in Europe yesterday, lawyer Philippe Vlaemminck of Vlaemminck & Partners also underlined that the only way forward on gambling is political. "Even the European Court of Justice has said it does not want to rule on something that is political," he argued.
According to Vlaemminck, the way forward could be to first recognise that "gambling is an economic activity of a particular nature" and that member states must be able to maintain their own objective crietria about what is acceptable and, while respecting EU law, decide upon a taxation and operational structure: be that prohibition, monopoly or licenses.
The political solution to gambling, he said, should be based upon the four fundamental principles of the European architecture: subsidiarity, solidarity, integrity and precaution. "These principles need to be taken into account so that a political solution can be found," Vlaemminck argued.
