- Antanas “Tony G” Guoga has been elected to the European Parliament as one of 15 MEPs from Lithuania.
- Tony G stood as a member of Lithuania’s pro-European Liberal Party and received the most personal votes of any member of the party standing in the elections. He has become well known in Lithuania not just for poker, but for his entrepreneurial and charitable activities.
Antanas “Tony G” Guoga has been elected to the European Parliament as one of 15 MEPs from Lithuania.
“Today we made history in Lithuanian politics,” Tony G was reported as saying by PokerNews, a company he founded.
Tony G stood as a member of Lithuania’s pro-European Liberal Party and received the most personal votes of any member of the party standing in the elections. He has become well known in Lithuania not just for poker, but for his entrepreneurial and charitable activities.
His latest venture is Tonybet Poker, a Chinese Poker-only real money online poker room.
The former partypoker Pro had party’s Head of Consumer Public Relations Warren Lush on hand to immediately tweet the victory from Vilnius.
The elections, held against a background of fiscal crisis, produced a result which saw Euroskeptic parties gain substantial numbers of seats. In broad brush terms, pro-European parties may be more inclined to support an EU wide framework for online poker regulation than skeptics, who would object to centralization of powers.
While Tony G now has a much wider remit than representing poker players and higher priorities in representing his country, he can be expected to be a pro-poker voice in the parliament.
Lithuania is one of the member states against which the EU resumed infringement proceedings last year. The latest bill to legislate for online gaming is now paused until August 8 for EU comment.
In both the formal and informal meetings which characterize much of doing business in Brussels, he will have the chance to counter any misinformation about poker and online poker in particular.
