The European Commission may take France to court as early as next month over its restrictions on gambling operators, according to a report in the Financial Times last week. This follows the arrest in France, on September 15, of two senior executives of Bwin, the Austrian online sports betting operator, who went to sign a sponsorship deal with AS Monaco. The operation, carried out on the behest of the state monopoly Français des Jeux, was calculated to attain maximum publicity.
The French authorities claim Bwin has violated French gaming law, which bans private sports betting businesses from operating in the country.
According to the spokesman of EU Internal Market Commissioner Charlier McCreevy: "We continue to receive complaints and Commissioner McCreevy intends to proceed with these cases and initiate additional cases against other member states, including France."
On the Bwin arrests, he warned that criminal sanctions against individual executives that were based on laws against illegal gambling could in themselves be "problematic" from the Commission's point of view.
He suggested such a move might have some impact on last week's arrests: "If national rules on gambling are incompatible with Community Law, criminal sanctions associated with the breach of these national rules can also be problematical from a single market perspective."
Under EU law, governments have the right to place restrictions on gambling and sports betting operators, but they must be "non-discriminatory, proportionate and consistent". Mr McCreevy's spokesman said: "It is not acceptable to limit the freedom to provide betting services on account of protecting consumers and at the same time allow monopoly holders to advertise betting services."
Earlier in the week the International Herald Tribune reported that the arrest of the Austrian executives had raised the stakes in a Europe-wide battle between lucrative state-sponsored betting monopolies and their upstart rivals on the Internet, raising eyebrows at the Commission.
The move follows the recent arrest of two British online gambling executives in the United States, where the government maintains that Internet betting is largely illegal.
Yet while the US opposes online gambling on religious and moral grounds, the European objections have stemmed largely from a desire to protect government-sponsored monopolies that generate more than €25 billion in annual revenue.
According to the IHT, online gambling companies have attracted about five per cent of the global betting business. Because of the growing popularity of gambling, the overall pot is growing, and analysts believe this growth is not at the expense of the monopolies but is attracting new customers.
The European Betting Association expressed shock at the arrest of the two Austrian executives. EBA member Bwin is a licensed, regulated company in various EU member states and has been listed on the Vienna stock exchange since March 2000.
EBA secretary general Didier Dewun sees the move as "a provocation and the desperate last resort of a dying monopoly" and called on the EU Commission to take urgent action.