Online gambling industry lobby group the Remote Gambling Association has written to the Greek regulator asking it to stop reviewing interim licences originally issued to 24 operators in 2011.
Representatives of the companies, which began paying taxes in 2011 upon condition of eventually being able to apply for full licences, were recently invited to a hearing by the regulator, ostensibly to submit further documents to secure extensions of their temporary permits.
The RGA has however claimed that “the real reason for interviewing the operators” was to prepare the 402-name blacklist unveiled in Greece in Tuesday (see here for more details). It has also argued the blacklist is based on regulations that the Greek government has not amended to address the various points of non-compliance with EU law raised by Malta and the EC in their detailed opinions during the EC standstill period.
The London-based lobby group therefore believes the 402-strong blacklist is “contrary to European Commission law and will open the Greek authorities up to legal challenge.”
The regulations authorising the compilation of the blacklist also allow ISPs to be fined €50k per day, per operator, during the time that they fail to block access to blacklisted sites. Payment and credit institutions will also be required to stop processing payments on behalf of non Greek-licensed operators, with the latter risking fines of €20,000 for each game type and €10,000 for advertising, with direct marketing communications costing €200,000 per infringement.
But while EU regulators removed their block on the controversial regulations in April, the end of the notification procedure did not preclude them from launching infringement proceedings against Greece over the measures, should they adopt them.
The RGA added yesterday that it feared the real reason for initiating a review of the licences and creating the blacklist was to pave the way for Greek offline monopoly OPAP to extend this monopoly online. The EC standstill on a set of Greek amendments to its Gambling Law in order to restrict online betting and most other online games to OPAP until 2020, also opposed by the EC and Malta, expired last week.
CEO Clive Hawkswood cautioned that for all other jurisdictions which had chosen to persist with online monopolies,”a significant proportion of the population have chosen to bet on more attractive sites based in other jurisdictions. We have no doubt this will happen in Greece too.”
Betfair and William Hill, the first companies to exit Greece last November after the sanctions were implemented despite not having yet gained EC clearance, applied last month to run the Greek gambling monopoly set to be handed to OPAP. Their applications are aimed to expose the lack of a competitive and transparent tender process, as required under EU law.
Article written by Katy Stirland
