24 Amendments of Sari ESSAYAH related to 2011/2084(INI)
Amendment 6 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 1 a (new)
Paragraph 1 a (new)
1a. Recalls that the revenue from the organisation of many gambling games is based on probability calculations and that in the long term the revenue is therefore certain and may be very great, depending on the way in which the games are organised, so that permits for these games and the ways in which they are organised should be regulated with particular care, and secondly that if the final outcome is not based on probability calculations, for example in the case of betting, an effort should be made to eliminate opportunities to influence the final outcome by means of bribery or other dishonest methods;
Amendment 7 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 1 a (new)
Paragraph 1 a (new)
1a. Recalls the growing economic importance of the online gambling industry, notes, however, that the market and other data published in the Green Paper are highly contested estimates and should be checked against data which online gambling operators taking part in the consultation on the Green Paper on online gambling should be requested to provide; agrees with the Court of Justice of the European Union that this is an economic activity with specific characteristics;
Amendment 11 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 1 b (new)
Paragraph 1 b (new)
1b. Recalls that it may be possible to use on-line gambling games to launder money and for other criminal activity;
Amendment 12 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 1 b (new)
Paragraph 1 b (new)
1b. Underscores the standpoint of the European Court of Justice, that the Internet is simply a channel for offering games of chance; although this does not affect the Member States' competence to decide about its specific regulatory approach of Internet gambling and to limit or exclude certain services from being offered to its consumers;
Amendment 27 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 2 a (new)
Paragraph 2 a (new)
2a. Respects the decision by a number of Member States to ban Internet gambling totally or partially, or maintain a monopoly, as it is their right, according to the jurisprudence of the Court of Justice; notes that a number of the biggest EU- based commercial online gambling operators make the largest part of their revenue in Member States where such a non-discriminatory ban is in place, in clear violation of EU law;
Amendment 29 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 2 b (new)
Paragraph 2 b (new)
Amendment 30 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 2 c (new)
Paragraph 2 c (new)
2c. Points to the need to respect the competence of the Member States to regulate gambling services and therefore also the ways gambling services can be promoted and/or advertised;
Amendment 31 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 2 d (new)
Paragraph 2 d (new)
2d. Notes that, after the many clarifications provided by the Court of Justice in its most recent gambling rulings, there is no basis for the existing infringement cases launched in 2006 and 2007; calls on the Commission to drop these cases;
Amendment 34 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 3
Paragraph 3
3. insists on the need to dissuade players from engaging in illegal gambling, which means that lawful serv; points to the Court of Justice’s must be provided as a system that is coherent across the whole of Europe, especially standing jurisprudence that, in the specific and sensitive area of gambling, public monopolies or private monopolies under strict supervision of the state are likely to be more effective at channelling terms of tax treatmehe desire to gamble and the operation of games int,o and applies common standards of accountability and integrity controlled circuit and at overcoming the risks connected with the gaming industry than a system under which private operators operate in competition with each other;
Amendment 40 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 3 a (new)
Paragraph 3 a (new)
3a. Considers that, in order to engage in on-line gambling, it should be a requirement to open a gambling account, players should be identified in a precise and watertight manner in order to open a gambling account, and financial transactions should be monitored, all of which should be absolute requirements in order to protect gamblers, ensure that systems of gambling bans are effective and prevent under-age gambling, abuses and crime;
Amendment 41 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 3 a (new)
Paragraph 3 a (new)
3a. Calls - in keeping with the principle of ‘active subsidiarity’ - for a common regulatory framework laying down binding high-level standards or coordinated approaches, where appropriate, in addition to national standards, with regard to preventing gambling addiction and betting fraud and to protecting young people; reaffirms its position that, in as sensitive an area as gambling, industry self-regulation can only complement but not replace statutory legislation; takes note of self-regulatory initiatives taken by public and commercial gambling operators’ associations with regard to responsible gaming and other standards; rejects the idea of making the CEN Workshop Agreement on responsible remote gambling measures, which is non-binding and only reflects the lowest common denominator among commercial online gambling operators, a template for an EU legal framework; rejects the ideas of establishing an “EU Safe Gambling” mark of trust and creating a common EU certification procedure based on these or other voluntary standards as an obvious attempt to circumvent national statutory requirements, especially the requirement for a national licence as confirmed by the Court of Justice;
Amendment 46 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 3 b (new)
Paragraph 3 b (new)
3b. Considers that immediately upon the creation of a gambling account, comprehensive and accurate information must be available concerning gambling games, responsible gambling and opportunities for treatment of dependence on gambling, that gamblers should set themselves monetary limits on expenditure per 24 hours and per month, which should apply to the whole gambling service, and that gamblers should also be protected by limiting incentives and rewards for gambling;
Amendment 47 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 3 b (new)
Paragraph 3 b (new)
3b. Respects the right of the Member States to draw on a wide variety of repressive measures against illegal online gambling offers; supports, to increase the efficiency of the fight against illegal online gambling offers, the introduction of a regulatory principle whereby a gambling company can only operate (or bid for the required national licence) in one Member State if it does not operate in contravention of the law in any other EU Member State;
Amendment 49 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 3 c (new)
Paragraph 3 c (new)
3c. Considers that the various forms of on-line gambling, such as rapid interactive games of chance which have to be played at a frequency of seconds, betting or lotteries in which the draw takes place weekly, differ from one another and require different solutions, because opportunities for abuses are greater in some forms of gambling than in others, and in particular the opportunity for money laundering depends on the strength of identification, the type of game and also the methods of payment used, which makes it necessary in the case of some forms of game to monitor play in real time and exercise stricter control than is the case with others;
Amendment 50 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 3 c (new)
Paragraph 3 c (new)
3c. Calls for cooperation between national regulatory bodies to be considerably expanded, with the Commission being involved, so as to develop common standards and take joint action against online gambling companies which operate in one or several Member States without the required national licence for all the games they offer; states that, in particular for combating money laundering, betting fraud and other, often organised, crime, national stand-alone solutions are not successful; points to the discussions in Council as to whether and in what way the Internal Market Information System could contribute to a more effective cooperation between national regulatory bodies;
Amendment 52 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 3 d (new)
Paragraph 3 d (new)
3d. Considers that, in order to prevent money laundering and abuses, it must be possible to identify players individually without fail even though organising identification adds to operating costs or may reduce turnover;
Amendment 53 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 3 e (new)
Paragraph 3 e (new)
3e. Considers that it should be rendered impossible to create more than one gambling account per person with the same gambling company by means of an identification procedure, making use for this purpose, for example, of on-line banking ID codes or an infallible electronic identification system based on a bank card or credit card or on some other method;
Amendment 54 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 3 f (new)
Paragraph 3 f (new)
3f. Takes the view that Member States should designate an authority responsible for monitoring the operations of gambling companies and, if necessary, another authority to which gambling companies should report suspicious incidents, and that these authorities should be given the opportunity, where necessary, to intervene actively in financial transactions;
Amendment 55 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 3 g (new)
Paragraph 3 g (new)
3g. Considers that cooperation and the adoption of best practices between national supervisory authorities should be promoted and that they should exchange information with the responsible authorities of other Member States in order to prevent abuses and money laundering;
Amendment 56 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 3 h (new)
Paragraph 3 h (new)
3h. Considers that approval and monitoring by supervisory authorities should focus not only on financial transactions but also on all those subfields of on-line gambling which have interfaces with the prevention of abuses and crime, such as identification systems and risk assessments, and that monitoring procedures and tools should primarily be such that the authority can perform its supervisory duties independently of the operator or of the supplier of the system;
Amendment 57 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 3 i (new)
Paragraph 3 i (new)
3i. Considers that monitoring of financial transactions should be possible, for example, in such a way that payments to or from a gambling account have to be made using a single bank account or other account registered by the gambler when creating it, the holder of which account must be identifiable;
Amendment 68 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 5
Paragraph 5
Amendment 83 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 6
Paragraph 6
6. Stresses that on-line gambling is a major source of funding for the sporevenue from gambling with lottery games contributing the by far largest part, is a major source of funding for public benefit causes in the EU such as sport, arts iandustry; recalls that on-line betting is one form of the commercial exploitation of sporting ev culture, charity/social projects, science/health/research, education/youth, environment/climate change and developments; calls on the Commission to look at ways in which revenues from sports betting might be routinely used to safeguard the integrity of spopular sport and develop itrting competitions from betting manipulations, while considering that any funding mechanism should not lead to a situation from which only very few professional, broadly televised sports would benefit while other sports and especially grassroots sport would see the funding generated by sport betting diminished; calls on the Commission to ensure that there is a high level of legal securicertainty, particularly regarding application of the rules on state aid;
Amendment 87 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 6 a (new)
Paragraph 6 a (new)
6a. Recalls that Member States have the right to exclude private profit-making interests from the gambling sector and may restrict the operation of gambling to public or charitable bodies;