Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-11-14-Speech-2-414"
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"en.20061114.39.2-414"2
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"There is no specific Community legislation governing gambling. If and how Member States wish to regulate gambling services at national, regional or local level is therefore a matter for each Member State to decide for itself. But the general principles of Community law and the Treaty continue to apply and any national legislation must respect those principles. The diversity of national approaches can lead to legal uncertainty for service providers and their customers, especially where national legislation fails to respect Community law.
Tonight’s debate helps to illustrate once more the diversity of opinion with regard to gambling services. I am, of course, aware of calls for a specific Community regulatory framework for gambling services. There are equally strong views opposing such Community intervention. In my experience, the first requirement in trying to find a solution is to have a clear understanding of the problem and of the policy options available. The Commission recently published a study carried out on its behalf by the Swiss Institute of Comparative Law. The study illustrates the complexity and diversity of national regulatory approaches. Should Parliament believe that, over and above our efforts to ensure the application of fundamental Treaty principles, more should be done to ensure legal clarity, I look forward to hearing Parliament’s detailed views on what precisely the issues are that warrant Community intervention and what policy options would command a sufficient degree of consensus for a meaningful solution at Community level. In the absence of such a political consensus, legal certainty may ultimately only be provided by the European Court of Justice.
I should like to add just a few more words to this debate. Mr Harbour put it fairly succinctly when he made the point that there was a great deal of inconsistency amongst many of the Member States, against whom we are now taking some action. We shall probably be taking action against some more. If Member States, their governments and their legislatures want to have very restrictive laws on gambling, etc., they may do so on public policy grounds. But they cannot do the things that Mr Harbour has referred to. They cannot spend millions and millions advertising gambling services for their own national operators or their own national, publicly-owned operators. They cannot allow their own national operators and bar everybody else. If Member States feel, as some Members of this House obviously do, that gambling is a greater scourge than alcohol addiction, tobacco addiction and all these other addictions put together, then they should ban it for everybody and allow no gambling at all in their Member State. That is one option. Then nobody would complain. The Commission would not take action against them and no one would worry about it at all. But it is a bit hypocritical for Member States to allow millions to be spent promoting gambling and at the same time allow nobody else to play the game.
In all Member States gambling is regulated to some extent. The point made by Mrs McCarthy about international standards for online gambling is quite a good idea in itself, but first some form of consensus would be needed among the 25 Member States. We can start by getting consensus in this Parliament, but I do not think we will. I am certain that we will not get it in the Council of Ministers. I have about the same chance of getting consensus in the Council of Ministers and Parliament as I have of winning the lottery this weekend. Those would be the odds against it. So there is much to commend what Mrs McCarthy says, and if there was a consensus I would like to go in that direction, but my experience tells me that it would be very difficult.
If you read the executive summary in the recent study, which, if I am correct, comes to 51 pages, and save yourself reading the other couple of hundred pages, it does not come down heavily on one side or the other.
Well, I do not think my honourable friend Mr Toubon has read the report, but you can see from that how complex this problem is and the many different ways it is regulated. It will show you what a gargantuan task it would be to head down that road.
In my political life I have not been afraid to take on impossible causes and tilt at windmills and run into brick walls, but I think that if we did attempt some kind of harmonisation of this area, what we would end up with, if anything, would be the most illiberal piece of legislation ever to go through any House anywhere in the world, because it is not possible. I have recognised for a long time that there are great differences of opinion here, long before I came to this conclusion. I recognise that throughout Europe, and even in my home country, there would be very different views about this. Some people, I know, think that it is worse than drinking addiction, worse than tobacco addiction, worse than anything possible, but others do not. I know which category I fit into, but I think trying to get some harmonisation in this area is going to be a long, long process."@en1
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"(comments off-microphone from Mr Toubon)"1
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