The European Parliament's internal market committee adopted a draft resolution on online gambling on October 6, which is expected to be confirmed without substantial changes by the plenary next month.
The EP position expressed is 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 European Parliament’s vote in plenary is scheduled for the week of November 14. This final vote is expected to lead to no substantial changes to the text of the draft resolution adopted by the lead committee last Thursday, 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.
Clive Hawkswood, Remote Gambling Association chief executive, commented on the matter: "It could prove to be a little premature to be suggesting that the wording of the IMCO text would form the final version agreed at the plenary in a month’s time. However, it would be surprising if it changed substantively.
"The most important questions are whether these recommendations will lead to any concrete action and, if so, when. Although a directive is being mooted, there is no legislative action planned at this point and we all know from long experience how fiercely any form of harmonisation will be opposed by some Member States. This has been recognised by IMCO which has gone to great lengths to underline its support for the principle of subsidiarity. In those circumstances, co-operation between regulators to improve efficiency would be a step forward as long as it is not really a veiled mechanism for closing markets and promoting protectionism.
"In the meantime, an increasing number of jurisdictions are looking to open their markets to private sector operators; for instance, we are particularly pleased with recent legislative activity in Spain and Denmark and we expect more jurisdictions to follow their example. In that respect, the whole green paper review process may be overtaken by those in-country developments. None of this may be welcome news for the European lotteries, but we continue to believe that they have nothing to fear from increased competition and, as ever, we would call on politicians across the EU to recognise the benefits for consumers that will inevitably come from the introduction of viable, competitive gambling markets."
