New gambling legislation in Slovakia
07-20-2016
, 12:15 PM
Slovak Ministry of Finance is planning to amend country's gambling laws. Among other thing, the new law would include ISP blocking measures as well as financial transaction blocking of the unlicensed operators. If I read the law correctly, unlicensed operator would be any operator who doesn't posses license from Slovak regulation authority.
You can find all information about proposed amendments here https://www.slov-lex.sk/legislativne...SK/LP/2016/745 (this is government's official legislative and information portal). To see the text of the amendments, click on “Sprievodná dokumentácia” and then choose the file: vlastnymat.rtf. Unfortunately, the text is available in Slovak only.
The legislative process is now in Interdepartmental Comments Procedure stage. Right now, different government agencies as well as other interested parties such as civic organizations or public at large are allowed to comment on the law. This stage will end at 03.08.2016.
This gives poker players two-week window to send their comments about the law to the Ministry of Finance. It should be noted though, that the comment functionality is available only to registered users of the portal (to exclude anonymous comments). It should also be noted, that comment has to be specific and substantiated. For more general information about writing such comments, see this: http://www.viaiuris.sk/aktivity/post...rh-zakona.html (this is the page of expert legal organization which tries to help citizen participate in governance). Again, I'm sorry about that, but the text is in Slovak only.
Those familiar with Slovak gambling legislation might remember that Ministry of Finance was proposing similar amendments few years ago, but was forced to retreat due to potential incompatibility of proposed legislation (=ISP blocking) with the European legislation.
This means that there might be hope.
On one hand, more and more countries in Europe are passing restrictive gambling laws. On the other hand, the Court of Justice of the European Union's decisions about such laws tend to err on the side of the free trade and against such restrictive regulation. See this extremely well written article about the subject http://www.onlinepokerreport.com/215...-player-pools/.
I'm writing the comment of my own suggesting that the proposed amendments should be changed in such the way, that any operator holding license from any regulation authority of the EU member state should be allowed to enter on Slovak market. Or alternatively, let the Slovak regulation authority to decide which EU regulation authorities would be acceptable. However, I have no experience with writing formal comments to laws like this, so I'm not sure how satisfactory the result will be
.
Anyway, more comments there will be, the better. And there are more arguments against proposed law than just free trade arguments: censorship of internet, unnecessary cost on ISP providers...
Hope this is a right forum for this.
You can find all information about proposed amendments here https://www.slov-lex.sk/legislativne...SK/LP/2016/745 (this is government's official legislative and information portal). To see the text of the amendments, click on “Sprievodná dokumentácia” and then choose the file: vlastnymat.rtf. Unfortunately, the text is available in Slovak only.
The legislative process is now in Interdepartmental Comments Procedure stage. Right now, different government agencies as well as other interested parties such as civic organizations or public at large are allowed to comment on the law. This stage will end at 03.08.2016.
This gives poker players two-week window to send their comments about the law to the Ministry of Finance. It should be noted though, that the comment functionality is available only to registered users of the portal (to exclude anonymous comments). It should also be noted, that comment has to be specific and substantiated. For more general information about writing such comments, see this: http://www.viaiuris.sk/aktivity/post...rh-zakona.html (this is the page of expert legal organization which tries to help citizen participate in governance). Again, I'm sorry about that, but the text is in Slovak only.
Those familiar with Slovak gambling legislation might remember that Ministry of Finance was proposing similar amendments few years ago, but was forced to retreat due to potential incompatibility of proposed legislation (=ISP blocking) with the European legislation.
This means that there might be hope.
On one hand, more and more countries in Europe are passing restrictive gambling laws. On the other hand, the Court of Justice of the European Union's decisions about such laws tend to err on the side of the free trade and against such restrictive regulation. See this extremely well written article about the subject http://www.onlinepokerreport.com/215...-player-pools/.
I'm writing the comment of my own suggesting that the proposed amendments should be changed in such the way, that any operator holding license from any regulation authority of the EU member state should be allowed to enter on Slovak market. Or alternatively, let the Slovak regulation authority to decide which EU regulation authorities would be acceptable. However, I have no experience with writing formal comments to laws like this, so I'm not sure how satisfactory the result will be
.Anyway, more comments there will be, the better. And there are more arguments against proposed law than just free trade arguments: censorship of internet, unnecessary cost on ISP providers...
Hope this is a right forum for this.
