Germany's Green Party slams "arbitrary" licensing framework
Opposition party says 20-licence cap was "never obvious" and pledges to support efforts to amend the treaty
Germany’s opposition Green Party has criticised the country’s regulatory framework and called for wide-ranging change, including the removal of the 20-licence cap.
In a statement the party said it was of the opinion that access to the sports betting market should be “linked to qualitative conditions and not an arbitrarily set number of bookmakers” who receive concessions.
“The limitation of the concessions to 20 vendors for us was never obvious,” Jürgen Frömmrich, home affairs spokesman of the Greens said.
“We support the efforts of the state government to amend the State Treaty on Gambling of countries accordingly,” he added.
The party also said the key requirement for acquiring a licence should be player protection, particularly the prevention of minors from gambling online.
While the Greens are in coalition government in the state of Hesse, the party lacks the nationwide political clout to drive change, and will need to gather cross-party and interstate consensus if a major amendment is to be pursued.
But Martin Arendts, a leading German gaming lawyer, told eGaming Review this morning there was little sign of that being achieved.
“The Hessian government is in favour of changing the law but the other states don’t seem to want to change the law,” Arendts said. “It is a complete mess and will probably remain that way for the time being,” he added.
But there are a few signs that political consensus is slowly building. The minister of the interior and sport for the German state of Hesse, Peter Beuth, wrote an article for German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung earlier this month in which he also criticised the licensing process.
Other parties, however, are currently keeping quiet on the issue and there has been little open dialogue on the issue. This is unlikely to change until the autumn after the European Court of Justice launched an investigation into Germany’s regulatory process earlier this month.
An opinion from the advocate general is expected to be published on 17 September with the court likely to make a ruling later year.