FRENCH ONLINE GAMBLING OFFER SHOULD BE REJECTED SAYS TOP EXEC

23 November 2007

Offer would be like throwing out the baby with the bathwater says Stanleybet boss


Stanleybet International's managing director has nailed his colours to the mast in regard to French offers to partially open up its heavily monopolised gambling market, calling on European Commissioner Charlie McCreevy to reject France's opening gambit of liberalising its pool-betting market while keeping its fixed-odds market closed.

Stanleybet International managing director John Whittaker told the Reuters news agency this week that the offer was inadequate. France and the European Commission are currently exploring a way forward on the issue, which has seen the EC threaten to challenge in the European Court of Justice the French government's protectionist approach to gambling. This is seen as acting against the EU principles of free movement in trade and services between member nations.

French ministers have hinted that France could open up its pool-betting market served by PMU monopoly, but does not want to open its fixed-odds betting market served by Francaise des Jeux.

Whittaker's UK fixed-odds betting firm Stanleybet said France's offer fell well short.

"I don't believe for a minute Commissioner McCreevy will accept such a situation whereby 'we give up that if you leave us alone'," Whittaker told Reuters in an interview.

"If McCreevy did that, it would be like throwing out the baby with the bathwater," said Whittaker, whose company instigated two key ECJ decisions the industry believes are slowly chipping away at national betting restrictions. In one of the rulings the ECJ said a betting business legally established in one EU state could offer its services elsewhere in the bloc and that restrictions can only be for reasons of general public interest.

France says protections are needed to stop money laundering and addiction and that privately run fixed-odds betting could be vulnerable to corruption.

The European Commission currently has legal actions, or warnings of ECJ litigation against 10 countries: Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Sweden and the Netherlands.

He faces stiff opposition from many states where national monopolies bring in huge sums of cash to government coffers.

In coming weeks, Greece and Germany are also in focus for the gambling industry, Reuters reports.

A court adviser in Greece will say on December 11 whether the authorities were wrong to refuse Stanleybet a betting licence. Britain's biggest bookmaker, William Hill , has also applied for a licence to open betting shops in Greece. And in Germany a treaty banning private online gambling is due to come into effect next January if it has been ratified by at least 13 of the country's 16 states by the end of this year.

The European Commission says the ban is disproportionate. Whittaker has threatened to lodge a complaint if the German initiative becomes law, saying that his company would argue the treaty was "anti-European."

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