bwin Betting

It was recently reported that many European governments have neglected to open gambling markets. The European Parliament’s research displayed that seven members of its union – out of twenty seven members – were involved in voting to outlaw gambling. And moreover, talking about the remained twenty members, only thirteen of them have made their markets legal. As always the reason for this event is the amount of taxes that are needed to be paid.

A lot of countries have had serious crackdowns on gambling markets in the past. Currently, the most violent crackdown has taken place in Netherlands – its residents are obliged to stake online with De Lotto, which is a state monopoly. A little earlier this year the European government had increased its pressure on foreign betting companies. It really seems that it took its strategy from Americans. Couple of years ago it was threatening the banks which they’ve been using. Later that same year the Dutch government had warned the banks that they can become victims of transferring money to the foreign online gambling companies.

Many other countries are also trying to ban the market in all the different ways. For instance, in Germany, where online gambling was prohibited since last year, its state monopoly North Rhine-Westphalia, ordered the British company Betfair to block admittance to its residents. A court of Dusseldorf is in the process of this order’s legalization. Also, another British betting firm, named Stanleybet was asked to stop its activity in Greece.  Hungary, Sweden, Estonia and Germany are all either in the process of banning foreign betting companies or have already restricted these actions in their states.

The interesting thing about all of these restrictions is that most of the European countries’ governments claim that it is all being done in order to protect their consumers from themselves. However, in such countries like Netherlands or Sweden, which are still allowing to gamble through state monopolies, this statement is very precautious.

The real trouble in this particular situation is that online gambling makes the profit government to earn finances via local monopolies.  For instance, in the Netherlands, the winnings earned in gambling have a 29% tax. On the opposite, Gibraltar takes only 1% of the winnings, and this is where most British online betting companies are paying this tax.

However, there’s a big sum of money staked. Europe’s total income from online gambling is around €3.5 billion, or $5 billion, a year. Can you imagine? It seems that countries can’t cancel their gambling markets from elsewhere in Europe and brings a lot of legal rules to support that view. Anyway, it doesn’t have enough strength to win the fight over a topic that affects a naked nerve such as this one. All these events have already touched major European countries though. These countries have issued so-called reasoned opinions that reject the statement that they are contradicting the European law. And they might be taken to European Court of Justice.