EU Law Recognizes State Rights To Ban Online Gambling

Countries within the European Union can now legally ban online gambling if their aim is to combat fraud within the country. This isn’t good news for the online gambling industry within Europe. Countries will now be able to restrict their citizens from gambling online and restrict residents from gambling anywhere other than the government owned land-based casinos.

It would seem that countries that allow any form of online gambling will not be able to restrict access to the online gambling market. They can only ban online gambling if is being done to combat fraud. By selectively allowing state-owned gambling operators to offer online gambling, the government would need to open up the online gambling market to outside competitors.

While this ruling clearly states that European states can ban online gambling, it doesn’t mention whether this is a country-wide ban to combat fraud, or if they can pick and choose which operators to accept or deny under the guise that some of them our fraudulent operators.