Germany

[Sniper]

BERLIN, Nov 12 (Reuters) - Germany's 16 federal states want to prevent foreign companies from offering Internet betting services, a magazine reported on Sunday. New rules to be signed off by state premiers on Dec. 13 will mean both foreign and German firms will be prohibited from offering Internet betting, weekly magazine Focus reported, without naming the source of its information. Either Internet service providers will be obliged to filter out offending Web sites or banks will be instructed not to transfer cash out of Germany to pay for bets, Focus said.

The state of Saxony and two other states recently imposed a ban on commercial betting as they attempt to protect their lucrative monopoly as lottery operators.

The ban was directed mainly at Austrian Internet betting firm bwin.com (BWIN.VI), whose German unit is the country's biggest commercial bookmaker.

[Richas]

I think this is more a domestic spat about lotteries than a threat to online poker.

http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/80772

In summary each local state (lander) is licensed for it's own lottery, the gambling enforcement people want to keep this restriction but the competition courts (even before the EU gets in on the act) have ruled that lotteries should be able to be on operate online nation wide. Likelihood is that online provision will be upheld by the courts and EU as to limit it to state only operations is protectionist.

[Sniper]

Anyone have access to the actual magazine article?

[Sniper]

No German players reading the legislation forum?... I guess I shouldn't be surprised /images/graemlins/wink.gif

[Tonding]

I searched everywhere on the Focus website, but couldn't find anything about op.
Haven't read about it in other newspapers either.
II'm not worried about it btw, because the EU already warned germany and several other countries, because they don't open up their state regulated system to private companies.

[Soulman]

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II'm not worried about it btw, because the EU already warned germany and several other countries, because they don't open up their state regulated system to private companies.

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And unlike WTO, EU's member states actually follow EU directives /images/graemlins/wink.gif

[context]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
II'm not worried about it btw, because the EU already warned germany and several other countries, because they don't open up their state regulated system to private companies.

[/ QUOTE ]
And unlike WTO, EU's member states actually pretend that they follow EU directives and the completely ignore them, but make up government statistics to mislead the rest of the EU, which, because everyone is doing it, turns a blind eye... /images/graemlins/wink.gif

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FYP.