The European Commission has released a statement in which it warns Belgium to comply with Commission’s requests for information on its national gaming regulations.
According to an iGamingFrance report last week, the statement, which reiterates the Commission’s commitment to follow up on potentially infringing regulations, may have been prompted by the detention of bwin.party co-CEO Norbert Teufelberger and the subsequent open letter of complaint signed by many gaming bosses and published in the Financial Times.
The statement is less forceful than it at first appears. The threat of infringement action only relates to a request to produce information on its gaming regulations by the end of the year.
The decision to send requests for this information was made prior to Teufelberger’s arrest, published as part of the EU Action Plan released at the end of October.
The Action Plan states that Member States “against whom infringement cases are open or complaints have been registered,” have been asked to provide “legal and factual” information so compatibility with EU law can be assessed.
Since the Action Plan will be relying on the newly established “expert committee” to examine national regulations, and as that committee is not reporting back for two years, new infringement action remains at least two years in the future.
