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French Told to Fix Up Online Gambling Draft - 06-18-09 |
June 18 - The European Commission is playing tough with the French as it tries to come up with a format to liberalize and regulate the French gambling industry.
Earlier this year, the Minister of Budget, Eric Woerth, announced that France was moving forward in a bid to open its gambling market and began moves to draft proposals to begin these changes.
At the end of March, these proposals in their first draft were referred to the European Commission for approval. This process was supposed to take 3 months and France believed that if all went well, it would be able to start implementing the law to go into effect by early next year already.
However, the European Commission has put the proverbial stoke in the wheel by responding negatively to the proposal. The reason given was that the draft did not reach the requirements of European law.
The French gambling team now have one month in order to come up with a revised version of the proposal.
The first proposal called for the formation of a regulatory body to be known as the Online Games Regulatory Authority. Some of the changes to be brought about in the industry include the liberalization of the state run market.
According to the authority, the process would be limited to "online horse race betting, sport betting and games consisting of shared games which depend on skill, whereby the player, after the intervention of chance, demonstrates his/her will and decides, in relation to the strategy adopted by the players, to use a strategy which is likely to increase his/her chance of winning (for eg. online poker)."
However, the EU has a problem with several features, including low maximum payouts and restrictions on overseas competition.
France has until July 8th to resubmit its revised proposal or face legal action by the European Commission.
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