Is online gambling regulated in the E.U.?

[EndofEsau]

If so, why doesn't the US has some type of Trade Agreement inline with the E.U for online gambling? I mean if its being regulated in Europe. Can't some system be put in place for fairness and taxation. I mean you can have a brokerage account here in the US. And trade European stocks and bonds without any problems.

[vinylweatherman]

If so, why doesn't the US has some type of Trade Agreement inline with the E.U for online gambling? I mean if its being regulated in Europe. Can't some system be put in place for fairness and taxation. I mean you can have a brokerage account here in the US. And trade European stocks and bonds without any problems.

There IS a trade agreement, but the US have broken it claiming it doesn't cover some activities, such as online gambling. The US even LOST the case with the WTO, so have decided they no longer want to obey WTO rulings, and have changed the terms of their participation to expressly exclude online gambling. The small country that brought the complaint threatened to retaliate by pulling out of the agreements that give US media companies world copyright protection, and would thus not take action against any company that set up there to distribute music and movies, provided it was legal under local regulations.
Unfortunately, they didn't follow through, and the US got away with it.

EU states are now arguing among themselves as to whether EU regulated online gambling sites can freely provide service to all member countries. Until this is sorted out, it is hard to see how the EU can claim that the US is wrong in it's own decision not to allow EU regulated operators to market freely within the US.

[jetset]

I guess you could say that most European countries are 'regulated' in a sense....but not fairly, seeing as many of them are state monopolised.

Under European Commission pressure that is slowly changing, but unfortunately many governments want to cling to as much of their domestic markets as possible by controlling them with individual regulatory - and often protectionist - regimes, resulting in the development of a plethora of different rules and regulations.

The EC appears to have abandoned its former confrontational policy of forcing EU member nations to comply with the "free movement of services" principle in favour of a more collaborative approach which allows the development of individual regimes provided they are not too inequitable in European terms, and to that end I see the Green Paper currently in its consultative process as being an attempt to achieve some sort of harmonised regulations throughout the EU.

Give politicians something new and you can be sure they will complicate it, screw it up, tie it up in bureaucratic BS and wring new tax revenues out of it every time... I fear the free-wheeling and borderless nature of the Internet is being steadily whittled away as the governments of the world try to control and generate taxes out of it.