GOOD ONLINE GAMBLING TIDINGS FROM GERMANY

9 November 2007

German court says internet gambling ban an 'impossibility'


The German legislative quagmire on Internet gambling produced an interesting and positive breakthrough this week when the Administrative Court of Appeal in the state of Hessen overturned a ruling by a lower court prohibiting Austrian online gambling group Bwin from offering its online services to Germans.

The Court considered especially the practicalities of the case, according to reports from Thomson Financial, concluding that the practical impossibility of enforcing a ban on internet gambling rendered the law for all intents and purposes "null and void".

Monopolistic policies on gambling, and particularly online betting have dogged progress in the German market despite that nation's full membership of the European Union and its implied obligation to allow free passage of trade and services to other EU member nations.

The European Commission has been active in pressuring EU nations such as Germany to comply with the reciprocal principles of EU trade requirements, going so far as to threaten European Court of Justice litigation to open up restrictive markets.

However, Germany's states remain slow to accept the inevitability of European law, with a meeting of heads of German States scheduled for later this year which may seek to prolong lucrative monopolistic policies.

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