EU sports ministers want games of chance out of services directive

A European Union sports ministers meeting in April 2005 came up with a declaration asking for games of chance to be excluded from the scope of the services directive. Their bottom line is that the final solution ensures that sports funding in member states can be guaranteed.

The UK was unable to sign up to the declaration as 'games of chance' may be interpreted as referring to both state-run lotteries and electronic online gambling activities.

"It is better to have a services directive with carefully thought through and well drafted derogations and exceptions (as for games of chance) than not to have a directive at all. By sticking rigidly to the position that games of chance must be taken out of the directive, you run the risk of not having rules or regulations for the field of gambling or games of chance at all," Luxembourg Sports Minister Jeannot Krecké told EurActiv.

The European Non-Governmental Sports Organisation ENGSO plus sports federations from Germany, Denmark, Finland and the Netherlands all want gambling excluded from the services directive to safeguard the existence of the unique sport structures and their valuable contribution within the EU.

During a hearing in September 2004, most MEPs said that they did not want lotteries/games of chance included in the directive and especially not covered by the 'country of origin' principle.

The Association of Remote Gambling Operators (ARGO), an alliance of remote gambling operators based mainly in Britain, Gibraltar and Ireland, has produced a report arguing that in some member states restrictions are being enforced primarily to protect domestic gambling providers and/or tax revenue and not, as claimed, for acceptable public interest reasons.

"Under EU law, ARGO thinks that it should be possible to provide cross-border gambling services in another member state and is therefore against the proposal by Evelyn Gebhardt to exempt gambling from the services directive. ARGO says that national governments are exaggerating the argument of protecting consumer interests to block access to the markets. In reality, they are protecting state gambling monopolies," says Clive Hawkswood, the director of ARGO.

"We accept that state lotteries are always going to be treated differently from other forms of gambling so we would not object to whatever they wanted to do in relation to the directive, as long as remote gambling is included," he added.

In a related development, at a conference of German Länder federations and German sport federations in early May, the sports federations DSB and NOK have produced a resolution calling for the monopoly on sports betting activities to stay with the German federal government and Länder.