European Commission to Unveil Online Gambling Action Plan This Week
The European Commission is set to unveil its online gambling plan moving forward this upcoming Tuesday.
Member states are expected to discuss the following objectives: protecting consumers, ensuring fairness and transparency, preventing fraud and protecting the integrity of sports.
From the Malta Independent:
Although the date is still to be confirmed, Internal Market and Services Commissioner Michel Barnier is expected to announce a series of initiatives and actions that the EC plans to carry out in the area of online gambling, with the overall aim of building a better framework for online gambling services in the EU, as a follow up to last year’s Green Paper consultation on the thorny subject.
The consultation also showed that in an online environment it is virtually impossible for member states to address these objectives individually, the Malta Independent observed.
The key policy issues of the consultation were:
1. Definition and organisation of on-line gambling services: the Green Paper consulted on the main advantages and/or difficulties associated with the co-existence in the EU of different national systems and practices for the licensing of on-line gambling services.
2. Related services performed and/or used by on-line gambling services providers: the Green Paper consulted on rules and practices relating to on-line commercial communication, customer identification and regulations for payment systems for on-line gambling services and player accounts.
3. Public interest objectives: the consultation focused on three objectives which to various degrees may be valid for member states in terms of their national on-line gambling policies:
· Consumer protection: the consultation aimed to collect information on problem gambling and addiction and the measures pursued to protect players and prevent or limit such problems. Another key issue is how to ensure the protection of minors and other vulnerable groups. Questions raised relate to the promotion and marketing of on-line gambling and systems in place for customer identification, both for opening an account and for processing payments.
· Public order: the Green Paper consulted on best practices to detect and prevent fraud, money laundering and other crimes.
· Financing of benevolent and public interest activities and events: The consultation looked at differing systems of revenue channelling for public interest activities and mechanisms for redistributing revenues from public and private on-line gambling services to the benefit of society such as the arts, education or sport.
4. Enforcement: there is a considerable illegal market for on-line gambling services in the EU. It is estimated that for each licensed on-line gambling website worldwide, there are more than five websites offering on-line poker or sports betting without having a licence. An illegal cross-border market is currently accessible to consumers, due either to de facto tolerance or because of a lack of effective enforcement. This is why the consultation seeks to evaluate current enforcement systems and cross-border cooperation between member states and gather factual information on the efficiency of the existing blocking systems, such as payment blocking or domain name filtering.
- Aaron Goldstein, Gambling911.com
