Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-03-09-Speech-1-201"
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"en.20090309.22.1-201"2
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"Madam President, I am both proud and pleased to be able to present to you this evening the own-initiative report on the integrity of online gambling. As you know, the issue of gambling has always been extremely controversial in the European Parliament. Gambling was removed from the scope of the Services Directive, as well as from that of the E-Commerce Directive and it was also eliminated from the Television without Frontiers Directive. Why should that be the case? Well, I believe that most of us agree that gambling is indeed a financial service – the European Court of Justice has determined as much – but it is a completely separate financial service. We cannot compare gambling on the Internet with buying an electric kettle or engaging a carpenter to lay a floor, and it should therefore be dealt with separately. This is what the Member States have done up to now. They have laid down strict regulations in order to protect consumers against gambling addiction and against fraud and match-fixing, but also to prevent money laundering. In addition, their aim has also been to maintain law and order. However, not all gambling is the same. In fact, gambling on the Internet poses a number of specific challenges that land-based gambling does not, partly because of its cross-border nature and also because it is so readily accessible.
Overall, I believe that the report will help to bring the gambling sector back into the political area in which it belongs. The report is a balanced one and, in fact, also received considerable support in the committee, despite it being a sensitive issue. It was voted through with 32 votes in favour and 10 against. An alternative resolution has been put forward by a minority in the Committee on Internal Market and Consumer Protection. I have attempted to integrate as many of their views as possible in the report, but the political differences are so fundamental that it was not possible to include all of them. I would like to thank my colleagues for their support and I hope that my report will receive the support of a large majority tomorrow.
The negotiations surrounding the report have, at times, been more heated than I would have liked. We were very divided on the issue of whether gambling on the Internet poses a greater risk of someone becoming addicted to gambling, for example. I am a little surprised by this, because the figures speak loud and clear. A study from Sweden and other countries shows that the risk of someone developing an addiction to gambling is five to seven times higher if that person plays poker on the Internet than if he or she simply goes out and plays poker in the real world. However, I would be the first to admit that we do not know all of the consequences for consumers of gambling on the Internet. This is one of the areas in which we were actually able to agree on something, and that is that we need more information about how we can best protect consumers.
However, there are six points in particular in the report that I would like to highlight here this evening:
1. there is a significant majority in the Committee on Internal Market and Consumer Protection that believes that operators of online gambling should not merely comply with the gambling legislation in the Member State in which they provide their services, but also where the consumer lives;
2. clarification should be provided at a political level ahead of a clarification by the court as to how we should tackle the challenges and problems posed by the European online gambling market;
3. cooperation between Member States should be strengthened significantly;
4. we need to develop standards for protecting consumers against fraud, gambling addiction and the other dangers involved;
5. we need more research in the area; and finally
6. the European Parliament fully supports the initiatives and the process initiated by the Council and we urge the Commission to give its support to this, too."@en1
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